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NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2
- dralley 3y agoThat was fast
- dvh 3y agoImagine being the guy who bricked Voyager 2
- charcircuit 3y agoIt wasn't bricked. Communication was temporarily lost.
- account42 3y agoI'd realy like to se a post mortem about how that happened. I'd expect that all commands would be validated in a simulator with checks that mission parameters are not violated.
- tivert 3y agoIs there any more detail anywhere about what this "shout" consisted of and how it was accomplished?
- femto 3y agoThey turned the amplifier up to 11. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-05/nasa-restores-contact-with-voyager-2-spacecraft-after-mistake/102693086 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-05/nasa-restores-contact... Keeping an eye on CSIRO's Tidbinbilla website might yield some info as they get around to writing things up. It's the "horse's mouth" so to speak, as all Voyager communications goes via Tidbinbilla. https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2023/August/Voyager-2-lost https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2023/August/Voyage...
- zinekeller 3y agoSo basically exceeding the transmitter's normal operating range in hopes that Voyager 2 can hear it somehow. I'm guessing that between possibly destroying that transmitter (and having an expensive repair/rebuilding bill) and never hearing V2 again they've chose the first option. It honestly puts me in doubt on the chances that the self-realignment will work despite knowing that NASA have tested than mechanism more than what would a normal manufacturer have done.
- bonzini 3y agoThe probe would have reoriented itself towards the Earth in October, it does so twice a year. It seems that they just used a different, more powerful transmitter than usual.
- tivert 3y ago> The probe would have reoriented itself towards the Earth in October, it does so twice a year. I know that's what they say, but does anyone have any more details about that, too? It's hard for me to reconcile the idea that the probe can automatically re-orient itself with the idea that it somehow got accidentally pointed in the wrong direction. You'd think they'd end every set of commands with instructions to check orientation and fix it if it's wrong.
- albert_e 3y agoyes this is indeed how the probe was designed - hats off to the foresight. there are recalibrations every few months to make sure the antenna is pointed at the earth. video explanation of how it works- pretty ingenious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbsHgE89qO4&t=340s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbsHgE89qO4&t=340s
- kens 3y agoDo you have any reason at all to think they damaged the transmitter?
- 3y ago
- veonik 3y agoThey don't build 'em like they used to
- moffkalast 3y agoWe'll see how long New Horizons lasts. The Voyagers have a long head start that'll be hard to beat, though RTGs do run out eventually.
- gizmo385 3y agoI have to say, it gets really old seeing this sentiment on HN anytime a post about older technology gets made. We absolutely can and do make technology designed to last this long - it’s just that the vast majority of us don’t work on anything with those kinds of requirements or priorities. There’s no reason you need to be building your CRUD API, data pipeline, or cell phone to last 50+ years and doing so would probably be actively harmful to the actual goals of those projects
- veonik 3y agoFor what it's worth, I actually agree. See: Curiosity or Ingenuity, both relatively new and far outperforming their expected life. Not to mention that I'm sure the ground-based transmitters that were used to actually fix Voyager 2 are likely not old, so it really isn't a case of "old is good" which helped in this case. My comment is unfortunately an example where I let my late night shit-posting bleed over into HN, which is always regretted in the morning. Apologies ;)
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoModern space electronics cannot last this long. It would require a significant effort to design similar hardware and have it fabbed today. Modern missions want capabilities that necessitate high transistor counts and that forces feature sizes that will never be robust against radiation effects over long durations.
- vikingerik 3y agoCassini lasted 20 years (1997-2017) and was functioning fine all along. It was intentionally ended, but there had been talk of sending it on another 20 year cruise to Uranus. New Horizons is similar, now at 18 years since launch and still counting. They're not quite 50 yet, but there's no reason to think either couldn't make it that long.
- phlakaton 3y agoGo, V'GER, go!! (yeah i know i know wrong voyager just let me have this moment)
- mike_hock 3y agoI can't believe they never made a V'GER 2 sequel. And I certainly wouldn't want them to make one now in this crappy forked universe.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y agoit seems like voyager 2 gets to say goodbye on its own terms
- khobragade 3y agoOh don't make me tear up, I already cried at Cassini's grand finale
- h43k3r 3y agoI love the engineering behind Voyager 2. Is there a good book or documentary that folks here on HN recommend to go deep on the various engineering pieces behind Voyager ?
- basementcat 3y agoThe following document describes how the Voyager spacecraft communicate with the NASA Deep Space Network. https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/Descanso4--Voyager_new.pdf https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/Descanso4--Voyager_n... This is part of a larger series of publications that may be of interest. https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/summary.html https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/summary.html
- Simon_O_Rourke 3y agoVery interesting stuff - I had to go do my homework after reading that on how the radio ranging modulation works.
- NooneAtAll3 3y agothere's this conference talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o
- 7373737373 3y agoThese three videos by EEVblog detail the ground based antennas and how it is contacted: EEVblog 1547 (Part 1) - Contacting the Voyager 2 Space Probe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586Zn1ct-QA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586Zn1ct-QA EEVblog 1547 (Part 2) - PINGing the Voyager 2 Space Probe!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUvzgZt1Vug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUvzgZt1Vug EEVblog 1547 (Part 3) - Tour of the NASA Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfZz4EnhJBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfZz4EnhJBE
- mycologos 3y agoIt's not particularly "deep", but The Farthest [1] is a nicely constructed documentary of the Voyager program featuring interviews with many of the relevant people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farthest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farthest
- foreverobama 3y agoThe Voyager missions are simply incredible. Definitely worth reading up on if you're not familiar!
- qbasic_forever 3y agoThe original Cosmos series with Carl Sagan has an awesome episode all about the Voyagers: https://vimeo.com/291415990 https://vimeo.com/291415990
- cybersol 3y agoIt's amazing these projects began over 50 years ago in 1972 when 8-track tapes still dominated cassettes for music delivery.
- viking66 3y agoIt must be so rewarding for the engineers on these projects when so many years later their work is validated.
- mark-r 3y agoThat's if any of them are still alive! This was so long ago that a good proportion may no longer be with us.
- andyjohnson0 3y agoPerhaps you know this already, but Voyager 2 actually uses an tape recorder for data storage. I assume that all other options were either too fragile or too expensive back when it was built. The vehicle records flight and sensor data to tape, and then periodically broadcasts that back to earth. As of 2022 the tape drive appears to be still working [1]. [1] https://space.stackexchange.com/a/15291 https://space.stackexchange.com/a/15291
- prox 3y agoAbsolutely amazing work! Wow!
- LeoPanthera 3y agoI believe tape was chosen mostly for capacity reasons. The Voyager DTR can store 109 megabytes, which was impractically large for any other storage medium.
- malfist 3y agoI thought the tape drive was shut down to conserve power?
- glimshe 3y ago
- hilbert42 3y agoJust wonderful.
- alex-moon 3y agoLovely to see my home town in the news.
- bruce511 3y agoI feel this is one of those moments when the technical term "whew" is appropriate. I was born in the early 70's and the Voyager's have been travelling most of my life. In some ways they're like a touch-stone, something I always click on when I see an article. One day, like me, they'll finally die, but until then may they travel onwards and outwards. A tip of the hat to folks at NASA and JPL that built this marvel, with 70's tech, that still continues to amaze and delight us.
- Shawnj2 3y agoI work on spacecraft flight software and I was never worried about this lol The worst that could have happened is that the spacecraft would have kept the dish in the wrong position until October, at which point it would have re established contact. This isn’t even the last time the Voyager program has had similar outages, IIRC they had to shut down the dish for maintenance for several months and when they re established contact the spacecraft was fine. They should review their MOPS procedures so this doesn’t happen again (it’s generally standard practice to run commands against a simulated version of the spacecraft in a similar operating condition or a replica to make sure it won’t do something destructive) but from the first time I saw the headline for this my first thought was “lmao” and I was never really worried this would cause lasting problems for the spacecraft.
- throwbadubadu 3y agoIm already always much afraid when I have to remotely reboot a workstation and delighted being able to ssh into it again soon later, though the worst case here is not as bad as with this most far away remote machine, thus amazed by your confidence and calmness ;)
- Shawnj2 3y agoThe software is much simpler on Voyager so there’s not a lot to go wrong and there are a shitload of failsafes that have to go wrong before the vehicle stops working. For example on some stuff I’ve worked on and the Mars rovers there are multiple boot chips per flight computer and multiple flight computers per vehicle, and even if both are dead you can do some basic tasks just using a micro controller on the radio.
- Derbasti 3y agoIt is slightly amusing how the text says multiple times that the spacecraft "remains on its expected trajectory". Were they anticipating autonomous course changes?
- Aicy 3y agoI imagine something like an unexpected large mass could change its trajrctory with its gravity
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoSo can we build things like this anymore? I am lucky if my cell phone lasts more than a year. I have a feeling that even if today's hardware manages to last 50 years, all knowledge of how to talk to it will be long lost. I am sure some of the code/firmware will be proprietary and then contractor will go out of business and that is that.
- LargeTomato 3y agoWhy does your cell phone break after just a year?
- Knee_Pain 3y agoif the majority of the industry laugh at open source initiatives this is the only future possible
- OtherShrezzing 3y agoYou're comparing the absolute pinnacle of human ingenuity and engineering from the 70's to a consumer-grade item in the 2020's. We definitely have the capacity to build spacecraft to the quality standards of Voyager. Samsung would probably be willing to support your 2023 era Galaxy cell phone, if you're willing to spend $800m on it.
- Broken_Hippo 3y agoSo can we build things like this anymore? Of course we can. I am lucky if my cell phone lasts more than a year. That's definitely you, not the phone. Most people's phones last longer. Partially evidenced by folks complaining about updates stopping after a few years. I have a feeling that even if today's hardware manages to last 50 years, all knowledge of how to talk to it will be long lost. I am sure some of the code/firmware will be proprietary and then contractor will go out of business and that is that. Most of today's hardware isn't expected to last that long - and it wouldn't matter if much of it did. No one wants 50-year-old medical equipment unless it hasn't improved in 50 years. A 25-year-old computer isn't worth much to the average consumer. And some stuff will just be outdated: Do you really want to use one of the digital typewriters that combine a small-screen simple word processor with a typewriter? Things that we build for longer-term science generally is built to a different standard than the stuff we use at home and has different constraints and different sorts of moving parts. Especially when considering extreme environments. And most of these are made by governments, universities, and other institutions that tend to have a long lifespan when compared to corporations. And when they aren't, we can make sure to make laws so others can use science research things even if the company closes. Additionally: I think everyone expected Voyager to die long ago. It is akin to a fridge that happens to still be running 50 years later. A lucky accident.
- roydivision 3y agoJust out of interest, what is there to stop anyone on earth starting communications with either Voyager, and potentially altering its parameters?
- aaronmdjones 3y agoMassive lack of power and equipment and no protocol documentation would be the first major hurdles I'd imagine.
- bmitc 3y agoDo any probes publish protocols that have distinct receive or telemetry protocols? Would be cool to be able to listen in to some of the closer ones, if possible.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoEverything NASA does is public so if you looked for it I'm sure you could find the spec.
- onetwentythree 3y agoNot sure about a mission as old as voyager, but most modern missions use CCSDS protocols, which are open and available online. But just because you know the protocol dues not mean you have enough information to send a valid command. The commands are wrapped in a common protocol, but the commands themselves are typically mission-specific and definitely not made public. Here’s an example of someone unaffiliated with the mission decoding JWST telemetry. While they were able to identify the packets defined per CCSDS protocols, they do not know the actual content of the packets, which are mission specific. https://destevez.net/2021/12/decoding-james-webb-space-telescope/ https://destevez.net/2021/12/decoding-james-webb-space-teles... And as someone else mentioned, the biggest hurdle with getting a command to voyager is access to a 70 m dish. Not many of those floating around…
- bmitc 3y ago
- samwillis 3y agoAnyone know what the effective angle of Voyagers transmitter is? The centre of the signal was something like 69 million KM off to the side of earth. 20% of of earths orbital diameter. I suppose the difference is the effective receive angle, and by turning up the power they could get it to respond.
- ned1010 3y agoI just a have a thought that in the very very distant future humanity will be able to do interstellar travels and they might detect and capture still travelling voyger 1 or 2 and learn what we was like back then tell to their kids the story about us. According to NASA - "It will take at least 40,000 years before either spacecraft approaches another star".
- UhUhUhUh 3y agoThere's a Star Trek episode on that.
- delecti 3y agoWasn't it a movie?
- qbasic_forever 3y agoYep the first movie. It's so good and similar to the original series episodes (with much higher budget though) that it's easy to confuse with them.
- delecti 3y agoWell if traditional wisdom is to be believed, the first movie is one of the "bad" ones (being an odd number). Though I have to admit disagreeing with that rule of thumb on almost every point.
- ooterness 3y agoYou're probably thinking of V'ger, the errant Voyager probe that is central to "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". There's also a brief scene in which a Klingon ship destroys a different Voyager probe in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier". https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/V%27ger https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/V%27ger https://youtu.be/5kscm2_RCcA https://youtu.be/5kscm2_RCcA
- twilight7k 3y agoImagining Blind Willie Johnson's Dark was the Night playing in background while Voyager drifting through the infinite interstellar void, reaching further humanity has ever reached, still gives me goosebumps to this day.
- FireBeyond 3y agoUnfortunately, and not to burst your bubble, the Golden Record isn't playing, it's just enclosed in a time capsule.
- twilight7k 3y agolol, ik.The music part was playing in mind.
- mark-r 3y agoThis answers a question I had when they first announced the problem: how did they know it was 2 degrees off? Answer: because it was their mistake that threw it off, so they knew precisely where it was pointing.
- abnry 3y agoDoes anybody know the bit rates, bandwidth, spreading, coding, and packet sizes of the messages they send? It must take several hours to send a message. I also wonder what the minimum number of bits they need to send to recover control is.
- jeffrallen 3y agoCan someone find us the right place to look on the DSN web page to see the "shout" signal they sent? How many watts was it?