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NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
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- fsniper 2y agoGood old segmentation and goto's at work! Are goto's still considered harmful?
- CuriousCosmic 2y agoWhat's the paper title? "goto considered harmful considered harmful" I think? Even in modern C programming goto is still pulling its weight for handling unrolling and cleanups.
- shiroiushi 2y agoThe paper was written by Dijkstra, and even he doesn't like how it's become some kind of mindless mantra, instead of a warning against spaghetti code which it was. He never meant that you should never, ever use GOTO.
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- anotherhue 2y agoIncredible to see the same faces in that photo as in the excellent documentary: https://www.itsquieterfilm.com/ https://www.itsquieterfilm.com/ Voyager might make it to 2027.
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- IncreasePosts 2y agoThe documentary only came out less than 2 years ago, one would imagine most of the same people would be there - though I don't see Jefferson Hall.
- kibwen 2y ago> Voyager might make it to 2027. With some amount of luck, Voyager might last ten more years beyond that: "Even if science data won't likely be collected after 2025, engineering data could continue to be returned for several more years. The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back to Earth." https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/ https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/ (And then, 15,000 years later, maybe this happens: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football )
- singleshot_ 2y agoCan’t possibly say enough good things about this Jon Bois fellow.
- drtgh 2y agoHow they manage to squeeze all the resources of the probe and keep it working year after year is an astounding achievement, pleasantly mind-blowing. It is important that all the know-how about this type of maintenance never disappear. I hope the designs in electronics that this team would have wanted to have available in the probe are implemented in the new designs.
- shadowgovt 2y agoI should see whether there's documentation of what they moved and what they replaced. I imagine there's "plenty" of room to do that (in the sense that there's probably some programs that are no longer mission-relevant because they controlled systems that have been shut down), but I'd love to know what got tossed. Heck of a job.
- JackFr 2y agoI forget where I saw the headline, but it's still funny "Voyager: Please let me die. NASA: No."
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- AstroJetson 2y agoYep, 45 years old hardware, still getting software updates. Hey Apple, JPL is close to you, can you get someone to bike over and see how they do it? Thanks!
- MadnessASAP 2y agoMaybe some notes on how to handle degrading power supplies while they're at it.
- jonathankoren 2y agoThey turn stuff off. It's not a secret. The vast majority of the sensors are off. They're simply not needed in interstellar space.
- tnmom 2y agoGood lord could you imagine the meltdown HN would have if Apple had taken this option to solve the old-batteries-support-lower-peak-current physics problem? “Your device battery no longer supports the camera. Or the backlight on the top third of the screen. But it runs at full speed otherwise!”
- idiotsecant 2y agoWell goddamn done.
- cjk2 2y agoNext time I bitch about debugging something in a container I'm going to look at this and stop bitching. Great job!
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- Johnie 2y agoPuts your migration projects to shame.
- groestl 2y ago/api/v1 stands for Voyager 1 and is forever.
- _yb2s 2y agoYep... days worth of work to get Python code I wrote 3 years ago working again from all of the 'bitrot.' Can't imagine how much work it must be for them to produce new binaries to update these old systems from modern computer hardware. Although I suppose it could actually be easier depending on how the code works- perhaps it's just simple bare metal assembly without the approx 10^99999 libraries a modern python stack has.
- shiroiushi 2y agoIt's probably a lot easier in a way, because they don't have to worry about external dependencies changing at all. Modern code is a real PITA that way. What's hard about their work is 1) it's really, really slow to communicate with, so you can't iterate quickly, 2) the tech is really old and unlike today's stuff, so it's very specialized domain knowledge.
- kevincox 2y agoAlso whatever you do don't break the receiver pathway! Otherwise you will need to send a technician on-site.
- butlike 2y agoThe lead engineer from the 70's is actually in Voyager 1's fuselage. It's cramped but they seem to be doing ok! They're just taking pictures with an old Canon point and shoot.
- layer8 2y ago
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- Dalewyn 2y agoHell yeah!
- golem14 2y agoImagine you are the alien finding the probe 10k years from now and have to analyze and reverse engineer the now quite complex logic :)
- Night_Thastus 2y agoThere's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far. I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where humans have colonized by comparison.
- Buttons840 2y agoPerhaps our descendants will build a museum around it without ever changing its velocity.
- beeeeerp 2y agoI’ve never thought about it this way. What a cool idea!
- justinclift 2y agoSomeone (something?) will probably make a religion out of it. ;)
- RheingoldRiver 2y agoThere is no destination; there is only the voyage. There was no beginning; there is only the voyage. In life, we voyage together, and in death we shall voyage alone. Now, then, and forever voyaging.
- el-duderino42 2y agoI think a 19 year old yobbo, whose dad is a successful interstellar logistics businessman, who out of a guilty conscience for never having had time for his son and having bought him an overpowered spacecraft, will either put grafitti on it or misjudge his afterburner and half burn it while trying to fly a very tight corner around it, in order to impress the 2 girls he has on board.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoWasn't there a Star Trek enemy that was based on Voyager colliding with some kind of doomsday machine?
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- qwertox 2y agoHackers at heart. I wish media would report about it to illustrate what hacking used to mean.
- project2501a 2y agosorry, i just have a silly question: what would it take to send new probes out there? voyager 3 and 4 for example to follow the same path (more or less, sans planet alignment) V1 and V2 followed, but with better hardware of course.
- Rinzler89 2y agoYou can't. Voyager's launch date coincided with a planetary alignment allowing for gravitational slingshotting out of our galaxy. We have to wait for the next alignment.
- cbhl 2y agoIf you only want to get a gravity boost from Jupiter and Saturn (like V1) I wonder if you wouldn't have to wait as long, say, every 20 years instead of every 176? https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/timeline/#event-a-once-in-a-lifetime-alignment https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/timeline/#event-a-once-... But you'd still have to fly for ~40 years to get to where they are now, and they'll keep on flying during those 40 years.
- skykooler 2y agoYou don't even need to fly by Saturn - New Horizons only used a Jupiter gravity assist, and those are available about once a year.
- layer8 2y agoI think you mean solar system.
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- pkaye 2y agoMostly need money to fund them. There are various proposals in US/EU/China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_probe#Proposed_missions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_probe#Proposed_mi...
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- NKosmatos 2y agoNice one! Voyager carries the hopes, aspirations and fantasies of many of us space romantics. On the technical side of things, there are also other companies doing live patching, like the Ericsson telephone exchanges. Their code can be altered “live” while operating, in order to fix or enhance the software and with zero downtime ;-)
- Covzire 2y agoCould NASA send another probe after them to act as a kind of message relay?
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- jlaneve 2y ago> The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. Talk about a slow feedback loop! And I get frustrated when I need to push code to a repo to test things in CI...
- lang4d 2y agoHopefully they have a few local benches to iterate on for testing.
- LAC-Tech 2y agoHow much data can you send in a single radio single? I assume it's not TCP/IP
- dgfitz 2y agoHave you investigated this or are you just asking? I imagine if you wish to learn the answer it is a few simple searches away. And by “imagine” I mean, it is.
- Dylan16807 2y agoYou can get raw bitrate numbers, not so much about the way transmissions are formatted.
- huytersd 2y agoPosting a question in a forum has its benefits though. A bunch of drive by folks end up picking up information they would never have gone through the trouble of researching themselves.
- akira2501 2y agoDownlink from Voyager to Earth is currently 40 bits/s but can be up to 160 bits/s. The signal is received at -160dBm or around 100 _zeptowatts_ (1e-22 kW).
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- whatrocks 2y agoSucker for any news about the voyage of the Golden Record (almost but not quite a CS Lewis title)! For fun, I wrote a short story two years ago about a top-secret "Voyager 3" mission (and the probe's unexpected return to Earth): https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/ https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/
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- harles 2y agoPretty incredible feat of engineering (both back when it was launched and now). Does anyone know its current purpose? I’m curious if there’s anything we’re actively using it for or if it’s just a matter of “look for surprises”.
- retrac 2y agoThe magnetometers and charged particle detectors are still operating. So they are measuring the galactic magnetic field, and cosmic rays and the gas in interstellar space. The results are more or less what was predicted, though the exact boundary of the sun's influence was only discovered when Voyager 1 and 2 crossed over it in 2012 and 2018 respectively. Beyond that, yes, they're basically assuring us the sun is still there and that space is very empty. I don't think anyone expects the interstellar gas to vary in density on the timeframe that the Voyagers will be able to observe it but, I guess we'll find out! Edit: I spoke way too soon. It varies, as discovered with Voyager measurements recently: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/as-nasas-voyager-1-surveys-interstellar-space-its-density-measurements-are-making-waves https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/as-nasas-voyager-1-surveys-int...
- harles 2y agoExactly what I was looking for - thanks! Not earth shattering, but it’s neat to fill out our map of the neighborhood.
- taco-hands 2y agoI don't know about anyone else, but that box of assorted pastries/doughnuts should been rapidly consumed after hearing the news!
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- iancmceachern 2y agoVoyager has been an inspiration for generations of engineers. Bless you all that worked on it. Thank you. Recently I designed in a Voyager inspired secret Easter egg into the surgical robot I designed. I put a gold (plated) plate with everyone's signature engraved on it. Gave everyone one as a surprise Christmas gift.
- 14 2y agoCool! What else can you tell us about this robot you built?
- iancmceachern 2y agoIt's the Maestro from Moon Surgical, it's done over 200 surgeries, all successful. So far (no whammy) its had 100% reliability with the first 6 systems we built. We designed it (hardware wise) with only 3 engineers, including me, and we hand built the first ones right here in San Carlos, CA. The company is based in Paris and has a whole interesting history there as well.
- phinnaeus 2y agoHold on, is that the robot that did surgery on a grape?
- iancmceachern 2y agoNo, but I worked on one of those too. I worked on J&Js ottava, its designed to compete with the one doing the grape surgury, Intuitive's Da Vinci. I've had the pleasure of using one (Da Vinci XI) to play around with, it's truly amazing.
- squarefoot 2y ago"The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory." Just another proof that we may have gained a lot, but also lost something in our pursuit of modernity: on modern systems direct memory access is discouraged if not prevented by the underlying OSes, and this hack would not have been possible.
- lolive 2y agoI want no remote hacker to do this kind of hack on my devices.
- drivebycomment 2y agoModern systems can automatically detect bad memories and map those hardware pages out. SSDs can do it at the firmware. ECC are also self correcting. The "hack" wouldn't be necessary, or can be done natively in many modern systems.
- InvisibleUp 2y agoThe modern equivalent to this would be an embedded system with an RTOS, where you do get full control of memory, because you are the OS. We just have nice abstractions on top of that for the most common use cases, since you very rarely need that precise of control over system timings or memory allocation.
- hashimindie 2y ago[flagged]
- grosswait 2y ago> A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. It has taken 46 years to get 22.5 light hours away from Earth!
- sllabres 2y agoYes, this is why I always liked 'planet walks' like this [1] If you see Images the planets in the solar system, the solar system itself etc. are mostly not to scale. If you walk such path one get a bit of a feel how large everything is, I think especially if the plantes on the walk are to scale too. Even our solar system is mostly empty. And the distances to moon a microscopic. Walking such a path is is not the same, but a bit like [3] if one is patient (which is difficult on the internet) and doesn't scroll manually but only via the little "c" in the lower right corner, wich scrolls with light speed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_Planet_Walk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_Planet_Walk (there are several other listed at the bottom of the page) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model [3] https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem....
- nirav72 2y agoAll I can say is wow! This probe refuses to die. Despite being built with almost 50 year old technology. Amazing engineering by the people that designed and built it. Even more amazing is the people that continue to debug software problems from 2 light days distance.
- eh_why_not 2y ago> from 2 light days distance The distance is currently 22.5 light hours (and increases by half-hour per year.) But it is indeed about 2 days of round-trip time for debugging.
- nxobject 2y agoI would give my left nut for a Voyager operations + programming sim, complete with live patches and day plus communications round-trip time.
- userbinator 2y agoIf anyone is curious about the computers they use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Computers_and_data_processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_program#Computers_and_... 16/18-bit custom architecture, 4k/8k words (around 9/18KB total). Other sources I could find indicate a 250kHz clock frequency and around 8KIPS.
- taylorius 2y agoCould get doom running on that, no problem.
- hujun 2y agoDark Forest Hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
- NKosmatos 2y agoAlthough that’s one of the many possible explanations of the Fermi paradox [0], I prefer to think that the real reason we haven’t discovered (or we haven’t been discovered) is the fact that we’re limited by the speed of light. The distances are so vast, almost unfathomable, that we need Faster Than Light means of traveling. Perhaps I’m being naive or romantic, but I prefer to think this is the real reason :-) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
- shiroiushi 2y agoThe speed of light and great distances are indeed a limiter, but the universe has been around for billions of years. Even with the great distances, an interstellar civilization that's been around for millions of years would have had plenty of time to find us by now.
- butlike 2y agoEntropy is probably why. Also as particles spread out, there's less of a chance of interaction, which by extension makes it so there's less of a chance that a system of electrical impulse that fires in a synapse would exist over large distances. This system, of course, would be the catalyst for producing such thoughts as "I wonder if we're alone in the universe." That's not to say you can't send dense information over larger distances with a shorter wavelength (re: radiation; gamma rays)... it just means the flying saucers with little green men landing on earth are probably out.
- botanical 2y agoThe Voyager project is an amazing feat for humanity. But I wonder, does NASA take into account the repercussions of sending a probe deep into space? I know space is big but I can only think of the dark forest hypothesis. What's the plan for further space exploration?
- techbuttman 2y agoWell they put a golden record on voyager (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/ https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/) with a lot of our info. so I think they were betting on friendly aliens, if any.
- T-A 2y agoVoyager 1 is currently 2.4e10 km from Earth. Trisolaris - sorry, I mean Proxima Centauri - is 4e13 km away [2], so in the (almost) 47 years since its launch, Voyager 1 has covered a whopping 0.06% of the distance. And it's not even headed that way. Meanwhile, radio, TV and radar have been advertising the presence of a new technological civilization on Earth for more than a century. That means any entity worth worrying about within a 100+ light year radius - a distance 44+ times longer than to Proxima - already knows about us. And that sphere keeps growing in all directions at the speed of light, or roughly 18000 times faster than Voyager 1 is moving. If you really want to worry about the Dark Forest, it would be more justified to ask if your local radio station takes into account the repercussions of sending commercials and TOS reruns into deep space. [1] https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri
- wumeow 2y ago> repercussions of sending commercials and TOS reruns into deep space. There’s actually a documentary about this: https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest
- somenameforme 2y agoInverse square law. With the power we're transmitting at, signals become just background noise relatively quickly. They're nowhere near strong enough to be detectable at e.g. Proxima Centauri. This is what makes the radio signals we do detect, like fast radio bursts, so interesting. So for instance, the furthest signal we've detected is called FRB (fast radio burst) 20220610A, and that millisecond length signal came from a source with output energy equivalent to decades of the Sun's entire output.
- divbzero 2y agoThe substance of this news release is incredible, but its style is also admirable. The authors managed to convey in seven paragraphs a concise and comprehensible explanation of how the team resolved the technical issue.
- bigbacaloa 2y ago[dead]
- fforflo 2y agoThat's what happens when you're freed from "SEO-optimized content". It's also a culture thing I'd probably put under military philosophy. I've worked with ex-military engineers, and you can tell from how they communicate. Writing technical reports and memos is a skill.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoHa! Thank you for mentioning it. I thought the same as well while reading it. It was terse but not skimping on details while maintaining a certain style. I really wish most other websites were like this. SEO and Google has really made the world a worse place.
- nomercy400 2y agoThis is cool. Does anybody know how they identified the non-working regions of the chip, without being able to probe the chip?
- ncr100 2y agoNo, though they should have a real hardware version of the machine here on earth, to test out hypotheses.
- ngneer 2y agoMust be difficult debugging a system with a 45 hour round trip each step of the way. And here I thought debugging a system on customer premises was tough. Hats off!
- orlp 2y agoWorse than the round-trip is that there's no second chances in some scenarios. If you mess up the wrong part(s) of the system, it's bricked with no way to recover it.
- ujfDIFmcjz_1dUB 2y ago[flagged]
- hoseja 2y agoI find it sad they haven't been overtaken by much faster and better probes yet.
- DeathArrow 2y ago>The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. No one thought of having backup computers on the spacecraft?
- noir_lord 2y agoMost of the computer hardware is duplicated but much of it has already failed/failed earlier - remember these are 50 year old hardware - a lot of the logic is TTL and discrete components - which are far larger than modern equivalents would be.
- shiroiushi 2y agoIt's not just 50-year-old hardware: it's hardware that's been subjected to cosmic radiation for 50 years, part of that outside the solar system (so presumably even higher).
- mrtri 2y ago[dead]
- hacker_88 2y agoWas it fixed up by intelligent life form
- welzel 2y agoI wonder if a "modern" probe from 2024 could ever have a similar lifespan. With systems hundred times more complex and build by a NASA that is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago, i guess a modern day Voyager will not even make it to the edge, let alone continue to function.
- rtkwe 2y agoWe'll have a chance to see with New Horizons. It's one of the five craft to ever be put on a solar escape trajectory.
- waynesonfire 2y ago> 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a That's about how long it takes for me to deploy a change with modern CI/CD pipelines.
- cookingrobot 2y agoHow many Starships would it take to go and bring Voyager 1 back to earth? If each ship was used like an expendable stage, and we were willing to use 100 ships, how long would it take to catch up to Voyager, stop, and return to earth?
- butlike 2y agoHow many ships could the ships ship if the ships could ship probes?
- wkat4242 2y agoThis is so cool. These guys are steely-eyed missile men. (Or women but I know what is most likely - lol). Remotely repairing a 45 year old probe 24 billion kilometers away. Wow.
- ncr100 2y agoThis achievement feels like it should be CELEBRATED, like in the Oscars of Software Engineering ... Technical Achievement award: * NASA