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NASA's Voyager Team Focuses on Software Patch, Thrusters
- prox 3y agoNow this is hackernews. Imagining working on spacecraft where no human made thing has gone before. Also is this correct? >NASA extended the mission so that Voyager 2 could visit Uranus and Neptune; it is still the only spacecraft ever to have encountered the >ice giants<. Aren’t they gas giants? I mean they are probably very cold, but usually they are called gas giants.
- greenyoda 3y ago> Aren’t they gas giants? I mean they are probably very cold, but usually they are called gas giants. "Ice giant" seems to be the more modern terminology: An ice giant is a giant planet composed mainly of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. There are two ice giants in the Solar System: Uranus and Neptune. In astrophysics and planetary science the term "ice" refers to volatile chemical compounds with freezing points above about 100 K, such as water, ammonia, or methane, with freezing points of 273 K (0°C), 195 K (−78°C), and 91 K (−182°C), respectively (see Volatiles). In the 1990s, it was determined that Uranus and Neptune were a distinct class of giant planet, separate from the other giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, which are gas giants predominantly composed of hydrogen and helium. As such, Neptune and Uranus are now referred to as ice giants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_giant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_giant
- Dalewyn 3y agoI've heard Uranus and Neptune referred to as ice giants since at least the late 90s. In any case, I understand ice giants to be a subset of gas giants with more specific parameters.
- infogulch 3y agoAstrophysicists have some funny conventions. Like how everything but hydrogen and helium are "metals": https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20120928_PeriodicTable-astro.png https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20120...
- gdprrrr 3y agoThose 2% "metals" are basically considered a rounding error and can be ignored. Also π ≈ 1. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2205:_Types_of_Approximation https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2205:_Types_of_Ap...
- infogulch 3y agoIs that true? I don't know if I can trust a person made of metal.
- prox 3y agoThank you! Learned something new. Honestly never heard the term before.
- Shadowmist 3y ago> Aren’t they gas giants? Uranus is for sure.
- ck2 3y agoPioneer 10 is technically further away, just dead as a rock without power (no comm for 20 years) Voyager website is awesome https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/timeline/ https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/timeline/ A very different time, thank goodness for DEI now https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/assets/images/timeline/0003.jpg https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/assets/images/timeline/0003.jpg
- psunavy03 3y ago. . . but it still watches football. http://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football http://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- jgalt212 3y ago> A very different time, thank goodness for DEI now or a picture of senior leadership at Google. plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
- schoen 3y agoWikipedia says that both Voyagers are calculated to be further away than Pioneer 10, but for Voyager 2 only since July 18 of this year.
- gonzo41 3y agoThere's a great ROI on these, I don't know why we're not sending more just like it with updated packages.
- btilly 3y agoThat's because the planetary alignment that let us send them only happens once every 175 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_program
- lloeki 3y ago> let us New Horizons would like to have a word.
- KineticLensman 3y agoNew Horizons, like many other spacecraft, used gravity assists from planets (Jupiter in its case) but the specific combo of assists available to Voyager will not in fact occur again until the year 2224 [0]. [0] http://www.gravityassist.com/IAF3-2/Ref.%203-143.pdf http://www.gravityassist.com/IAF3-2/Ref.%203-143.pdf, section 3.4
- lloeki 3y agoSure, I mean we won't get to do a Grand Tour again anytime soon but we can and did send things either to planets or heliopause and beyond. As a nearby comment mentions, Voyager were flybys so now that it's done and even if we could ROI may very well be lower than sending more focused orbiters (for planets and moons) or deep space crafts (for peristellar/interstellar)
- btilly 3y agoThe question is what "just like it" means. My point was that we can't send more "just like" the Voyager trips. But we can send other things on trips that resemble it in some way.
- qingcharles 3y agoIs it just me that really wants to FOIA the firmware code to read it? What is it written in? Assembler, surely? What is the development toolchain like in 2023 for a 70s computer? Do they have an emulator? What happened to the spare development Voyager they had lying around?
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoNot Voyager but here’s code from the Apollo program: https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/ https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11/
- KineticLensman 3y agoHighly recommend 'Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir' by Don Eyles who gives a programmer's perspective on the software aspects of Apollo. Some of which were fairly nail-biting, especially when they occurred in-flight.
- DylanSp 3y agoSeconding this recommendation, it's a fascinating book.
- Shawnj2 3y agoThey almost certainly upload every software patch to the dev Voyager and do an extended HITL test before they command a flight flash
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoYou probably don't need a FOIA, you can try to just email them. They're scientists and engineers, the best thing in their day would be someone showing an unbidden interest.
- belter 3y agoThat has been done before. You can't get it as FOIA as it's not a government record. https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/voyager-command-analysis-software-source-code-28641/ https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/voy... "The spacecrafts’ original control and analysis software was written in Fortran 5 (later ported to Fortran 77). Some of the software is still in Fortran, though other pieces have now been ported to the somewhat more modern C." "To keep the Voyager 1 and 2 crafts going, NASA's new hire has to know FORTRAN and assembly languages." - https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voyager-2-retiring-engineer/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voya...
- bullen 3y agoMandatory reminder for Voyager: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o
- protoman3000 3y agoI'm curious about how the upload to these spacecrafts is secured. We're talking about 1977 technology. What prevents an antisocial troll or adversial state to upload broken firmware?
- cjreyes 3y agoLikely somewhat modern tech to access the deep space network required to upload to the spacecraft.
- qingcharles 3y agoI posted about that last time it came up. I would guess nothing would stop you except resources. See link for someone that hacked another probe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37093344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37093344
- mk_stjames 3y agoThey are so far away now that you need a massive amount of radio power and a properly large dish to communicate with a SNR good enough for the onboard system to receive your transmission. Right now I think the only dish in the world setup with the correct equipment to signal the Voyagers that is large enough is the Deep Space Network dish in Canberra, Australia.
- vineyardlabs 3y agoThis is correct accept that there are 3 DSN sites, Canberra, Madrid, and Ft. Irwin, California, each with a variety of different antennas. They're roughly spaced 120 degrees around the globe from each other so that full coverage of the sky is always maintained. Each has a 70m dish which I believe is the only antenna with enough gain to communicate with Voyager these days.
- doublerabbit 3y agopulse the thrusters to disintegrate any form of lice form.
- 6th 3y ago<shudders> ewww. space lice.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>NASA engineers are working on a software patch that will order the Voyagers to fire their thrusters less often but for longer periods to maintain their attitude Anyone got any detailed info on what CPU, software and programming language is used on the Voyager that can support something as "advanced" as OTA software patches? It was launched in 1977 and since aerospace uses tech older than consumer tech, it probably isn't running anything remotely as advanced as a Z80, 6800 or 6502 which came out only a few years before Voyager was launched. Any info I found point to a custom 18 bit CPU built out of discrete TTL 7400 series parts which would be period correct, but not much details on how the SW, programming and OTA updates work. I assume NASA has the full HW-SW stack, compiler, toolchain, version control, plus HW and SW simulators for it so making some of them public would be really cool considering the source code of the moon lander is already public. What do they have to loose?
- sho_hn 3y agoThe main CCS computers are a custom 18-bit (not all registers are 18 bit) design from General Electric, used on both the Viking and Voyager missions. The onboard software is mostly in assembly. There's two of them. They send software updates fairly regularly (including a nearly full rewrite in 1990) and this is a common question. You can find some statements in older reporting on other updates.. It's in some sense not very exciting. Basically, it's an interrupt-driven system and you can, by radio command, invoke handlers that will rewrite some memory holding the program with new contents and hand control back to other routines. Of course with the expected error handling and failover protections in place. NASA got quite good at it during the Mariner missions, which saw the first remote updates for their programmable sequencers, and by the time of Viking and the CCS, it was a routine part of the requirements. There's tooling written in Fortran (and later partially ported with C) that supports the Earth-based team in preparing the updates. The patches discussed in the article are actually for a different type of computer in the system, the AACS (Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem). But it's similar there: There's redundancy (there's two) and you patch memory contents, do a memory read-out to double check and kick things into gear.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bongoman37 3y agoIts just incalculable what the ROI on this kind of a mission is. It is amazing that US and tech was in the state it was in when the planets aligning themselves happened and we were able to send these out there. A decade here or there and the opportunity would be lost.
- miohtama 3y agoWhat "binary format" Voyagers are running? How does the actual patch happening? Slow BPS transfer of a binary diff?
- nycdotnet 3y agoThis is a pretty cool article but calling the Voyagers “obsolete” is killer comedy. Ok yes and what non-obsolete technology has passed the heliopause and can be patched from 130/160 AU away.
- perihelions 3y agoWhat non-volatile residue does hydrazine fuel create?