14 ms·
NASA reconnected with Voyager 1 after a brief pause
- navigate8310 2y agoWhat's exactly stops adversary from taking over Voyager as I'm pretty sure they didn't had E2EE at the time of its craft
- gsck 2y agoI'd imagine trying to build a radio transmitter powerful enough to transmit that deep into space would raise a few eyebrows before you even get the chance to send anything to the satellite. That and having to guess what commands to send to the probe
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah totally. Here's a nice video on what NASA uses to communicate with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586Zn1ct-QA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=586Zn1ct-QA Not something you'll put in your backyard :')
- Cpoll 2y agoThere are stories floating around of hackers connecting to old satellites (for fun), so it's possible. NASA could have gotten away with sending a password in plaintext (can anyone intercept a focused radio signal?), or DES, but it's possible they didn't use anything. Where it is now, you'd need some serious equipment to transmit to Voyager, and network security is all about cost-benefit analysis; it's not worth the while for any adversary.
- martin8412 2y agoYou'd be spending precious compute and power to use any kind of encryption. It doesn't seem worth it for something that isn't of significant strategic value.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoWhat would that gain strategically?
- Stratoscope 2y agoSo you're troubleshooting a 47 year old spacecraft that is 15 billion miles away. The round trip time is 45 hours. That is some kind of latency!
- tanelpoder 2y agoAnd “packet” loss!
- tomkarho 2y agoMaybe Elon Musk could launch a couple of his Starlink satellites into deep space and reduce that latency. That or apply xkcd #303: https://xkcd.com/303 https://xkcd.com/303.
- Stratoscope 2y agoA cool idea. But will the additional hops reduce latency or increase it?
- KK7NIL 2y agoIt depends on whether they're running at a lower data rate due to the low signal power (which leads to low SNR, reducing channel capacity) or if it's just the speed of light delay. In the former case, a relay could help quite significantly. In the latter case, it would just add even more delay.
- akira2501 2y agoYou can alter throughput. You cannot alter delay. You also can only really broadcast at high power from one side. Deep space RTT is unavoidable.
- snovv_crash 2y agoThroughput impacts delay when you send non-zero packet sizes.
- thunderbong 2y ago> Voyagers 1 and 2 have been flying for more than 47 years and are the only two spacecraft to operate in interstellar space.
- labster 2y agoFinally, a “breaks one’s silence” headline that’s not a celebrity posting something on social media.
- forinti 2y agoYou could say that Voyager is a celebrity. It even does cameos on sci-fi movies from time to time.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoBut I really need to know who Brad Pitt is endorsing before I head into the voting booth
- mock-possum 2y agoWhat was the comment chain on that post about layoffs earlier? “It’s been an adventure…” “An important message from Voyager…”
- wiz21c 2y agoFTA: "Voyagers 1 and 2 have been flying for more than 47 years..." That should be written on a poster that is put on each desk of each employee of each car/washing machine/fridge/television manufacturer.
- akira2501 2y agoIt only really needs to be on the upper managements desk: "The $3.57 you save on capacitors per unit will cost you $50 in lost good will." On the other hand there is a balance between longevity through simplified maintenance and replacing aged appliances with newer and significantly more efficient models.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sandworm101 2y agoAnd being $3.57 more expensive than the other guy will deny you 90% of sales on amazon or any other online marketplace.
- asah 2y agoSadly, there's has no system for long term reviews. In my dreams, Amazon/etc would engage customers about their durable products and ask how often you still use the product and it/when you're thinking of replacing it... Given the economics, I wonder if best buy could pay customers $10 for a survey of their old products, knowing that it'll inspire upgrades etc.
- me_me_me 2y agoi lost my faith in amazon. its all alibaba rebrands and mass fake reviews, plus amazon pushing their own chepo brand into every search. its shocking how amazon went from 'me getting a package every week' to 'i go there only if i have too'
- Aachen 2y ago> [The S-band] uses a different frequency than the X-band transmitters signal is significantly fainter. The flight team was not certain the S-band could be detected at Earth due to the spacecraft’s distance, but [it turned out to work] This is the most fascinating part to me. Isn't it well-established how sensitive a signal we can hear? Did they implement something like a new signal analysis method that enabled it? And it says this wasn't used or even tried since the 80s anymore, I guess it grew too faint. Looking up the frequencies, X is 8–12 GHz and S is 2–4. Doesn't that mean X gets more data across at the same redundancy level? Why have this slower transmitter at all for only the first years, power conservation despite the fresh RTG?
- drmpeg 2y ago> Did they implement something like a new signal analysis method that enabled it? They arrayed three antennas together. > Doesn't that mean X gets more data across at the same redundancy level? There's nothing special about the frequency itself. The advantage for X-band is that the antennas at both ends have more gain. 12 dB for the spacecraft and 11 dB for the ground station for a total of 23 dB.
- Keysh 2y ago> They arrayed three antennas together. No, they didn’t. The three antennas are in California, Spain, an Australia; they can’t all point at the same point in the sky at once, and even if two could do so, they’re not designed to work as an interferometric array.
- andrewstuart 2y agoIt’s beyond my average brain how it’s possible at all for a machine that far away to get data to us.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 0x1ceb00da 2y agoCan't wait for them to open source the code once it finally dies. Right now they probably can't do that because of security concerns.
- andyjohnson0 2y ago> security concerns Does anyone know whether the Voyagers even do any command authentication? Probably doesn't matter now as only the dsn has the ability to talk to them, and that happens comparatively rarely.
- mrsilencedogood 2y agoEven if you magically had your own DSN, would anyone but NASA even know exactly where they are with enough precision to communicate with them? In a way, that's now your layer 1 authentication key. The coordinates of where to "point" your DSN.
- 0x1ceb00da 2y agoI don't think they are the kind of people that will take unnecessary risks.
- evoke4908 2y agoI'd be very surprised if its exact position in the sky is not public information. Even if not, it should be fairly straightforward to compute its position from the initial flightplan. Once it escaped Jupiter its trajectory is just a straight line.
- wongarsu 2y agoI was about to say that Voyager likely also suffers from the Pioneer anomaly, which is suspected to be caused by the RTG's thermal radiation pushing the craft off course [1]. But according to wikipedia we can't really tell because the effect of the maneuvering thrusters that keep Voyager aligned is much bigger than the Pioneer anomaly (Voyager 1 has fuel until about 2040). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly
- HenryBemis 2y ago(thinking aloud/voice in my head) If 'those things' are recharged by sunlight, I wonder how will they get the energy to continue transmitting (assuming they have whatever source AND solar panels - for when the fuel runs out and they can't catch any sunlight?) my dialogue with ChatGPT: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are powered by \*Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs)\*. These RTGs use the natural decay of \*plutonium-238\* to generate heat, which is then converted into electricity using thermoelectric materials. Here’s how the process works: 1. \*Radioactive Decay\*: Plutonium-238, a radioactive isotope, decays over time, releasing a consistent amount of heat. 2. \*Thermoelectric Conversion\*: Thermocouples in the RTGs convert this heat directly into electricity. 3. \*Power Supply\*: This generated electricity powers the instruments, computers, and communication systems on each spacecraft. Each year, the power output of the RTGs decreases slightly as the plutonium decays, so the Voyager missions have had to shut down non-essential systems over time to conserve power. Despite this, both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have enough energy to continue transmitting until at least the late 2020s, when their power levels will likely drop below the minimum required for communication.
- maples37 2y agoThat's the problem, they won't have enough energy to transmit anymore. The Voyager probes are powered entirely from their RTGs, they have no solar panels nor batteries[1]. So if the power output from the RTGs drops below the level needed to power the transmitter, Voyager can't talk to us anymore. There's no batteries that can be recharged and no solar panels it ever drew power from. The exciting part from this discovery is the potential to keep talking to Voyager longer than we thought. If the S-band transmitter uses less power and we're still able to detect that signal, we may be able to communicate with the probes with lower RTG outputs than we initially thought. Though at that point, if the radio is the only thing still running and there's no instruments operating, the usefulness is probably pretty low at that point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Power, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2#Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2#Power
- whamlastxmas 2y ago
- jeffrallen 2y agoWow: Triggering the protection system a second time turned off the regular radio: "While the S-band uses less power, Voyager 1 had not used it to communicate with Earth since 1981. It uses a different frequency than the X-band transmitters signal is significantly fainter. The flight team was not certain the S-band could be detected at Earth due to the spacecraft’s distance, but engineers with the Deep Space Network were able to find it." Heros, both those who made the S-band radio and those who managed to retrieve the signal.
- standardUser 2y agoHey smart people, if we were to launch a similar probe today using the most advanced technology available, how long would it take a probe to reach the same distance as Voyager 1?
- jlawson 2y agoReally depends how much money you want to spend and if you're willing to wait a bit longer for Starship orbital refueling to be tested. We could build a more or less arbitrarily large rocket in orbit by adding more and more fuel. More fuel means more delta-V means the probe is faster.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago"Launch today" is a very undesirable constraint for this goal. All of the probes that have escaped made extensive use of gravitational slingshot effects, which are only available during favorable launch windows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_lea... Long story short: they plan these out for decades at a time, and take your best shot when the planets align, literally.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 2y agoWe needed the slingshotting because until recently on-orbit construction was mostly a pipe-dream. If you can build larger ships in orbit, relatively cheaply, you can go a lot more direct, a lot faster.
- datameta 2y agoEven on-orbit refueling is a huge boon for orbital assist flexibility.
- wafflemaker 2y ago
- farrelle25 2y agoThere's a good documentary about the quirky team of NASA engineers that keep in contact with the Voyager probes... It's slightly melancholic, the engineers are aging, the mission's heyday is long past... but there's something gripping about it... "It's Quieter in the Twilight" (2022) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17658964/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17658964/
- mmooss 2y agoThe mission's heyday is right now! They are in interstellar space! We can and have send other probes to the planets.
- detourdog 2y agoDefinitely true. What Voyager is doing right now is mind blowing. Its a shame Carl Sagan is with us to cheer.
- sien 2y agoA Carl Sagan AI would be fun and almost somehow appropriate.
- 77pt77 2y agoHere you go: https://character.ai/chat/J9KKnR34ouSfAiNQIlDnY2v8pW5a1-QGYGmaWrtqcFg https://character.ai/chat/J9KKnR34ouSfAiNQIlDnY2v8pW5a1-QGYG... Now try not to commit suicide, like the floridian young man.
- tchbnl 2y agoI don't think you can blame a bot for a mentally unstable kid and neglectful parents.
- mmooss 2y agoThe creators of the bot are responsible for the consequences of their actions. There are mentally unstable people (if that's true) and neglectful parents (again, if true - it's easy to duck responsibility by smearing the powerless victims), and if the bot is a threat to those people then the developers are doing wrong.
- arcastroe 2y agoIf you would like a visualization of Voyager 1's current location, relative to our solar system, a quick google search yielded, https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info#orbitdiagramcontainer https://theskylive.com/voyager1-info#orbitdiagramcontainer It's absolutely impressive, yet at the same time somewhat underwhelming when compared to the vastness of our galaxy.
- the_clarence 2y agoFor some reason I find a number of comments in this thread quite weird, like they are written by AIs. I'm guessing there definitely are people who are creating bot accounts with AI at this point...
- edm0nd 2y agoIt would be really great if your comment itself was created by AI to throw off people suspicious of your account and it being a bot and its comments being AI.
- hvs 2y agoFor a very engaging documentary about the remaining team of Voyager 1 scientists, watch "It's Quieter in the Twilight". The ending kind of tails off, mostly due to the Covid pandemic, but it's a great look into how a group of aging scientists and engineers (the last to really understand how Voyager 1 works) are keeping it alive.
- execat 2y agoThis is interesting. When we talk about interstellar travel in the far future, this may be another issue to consider. The handover of knowledge will have to happen over at least a few generations. It will end up being a software application whose development and upkeep sprints/projects will be measured in multiple years instead of weeks.
- tivert 2y ago> ...but it's a great look into how a group of aging scientists and engineers (the last to really understand how Voyager 1 works) are keeping it alive. That kind of brings up some interesting questions of team composition. When you're building something complicated that will last 50 years, you probably want a few people on the team who are: 1) talented, 2) very young (like fresh out of college), and 3) have the mindset of a lifer. You deliberately get them involved in all the stuff and put them in the room when all the decisions are made, then they serve to preserve the institutional knowledge of the project for the latter half of its lifetime.
- avidiax 2y agoThe 3 Body Problem wallfacers are a bit like this. Some would freeze themselves to be thawed later to direct a several hundred year secret plan that only they know.
- 74ls00 2y agoI’m sorry but this comment just highlights how mind bogglingly bad we in tech are at documentation and knowledge transfer. The very idea that a single project can only survive as long as the same individuals are working on it is insane. For hundreds of years architectural projects have outlasted the original architect. Or just look at civil engineering: transportation networks, utility infrastructure, etc. The idea that every project must bring on a high schooler to maximise the longevity of a project before we have to start over is ludicrous. Our tech stack needs to prioritise stability, we need to learn how to document from our friends in other disciplines, our funding models need to expect smaller returns over much longer timescales, and we need a culture of celebrating those who do the tireless job of maintenance.
- eknkc 2y agoThis thing has been flying since 1977. Meanwhile a javascript app of mine from 2022 does not build now because I can’t get it to install the dependencies for some reason. BTW, that transmitter apparently can not transmit back to earth at this point because it is too far away. But looks like it can receive (we can transmit with much higher powers here?) and they managed to send a command to restart the primary transmitter. Now debugging. Debugging on a 2 day feedback loop. Fuck that.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoCaveat, the output from your build (JS/HTML/whatever) will likely still work like it did today in 20 years time. JS isn't the problem, it's the overcomplicated dependency and build systems that were layered on top. It's why Go is a breath of fresh air. A 10 year old codebase will still build and run like it was made yesterday.
- pants2 2y agoYes, just as my 10-yr-old old Java Applets and Flash games run perfectly... oh wait.
- SteveNuts 2y ago> Debugging on a 2 day feedback loop. Fuck that. This is what it's like for me, working with an offshore QA group.
- blitzar 2y agoDebugging on a 2 day feedback loop. Reminds me of working at the branch office with HQ on the opposite side of the world.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoI read once about an institution that had a computer on the top of a mountain in the Rocky Mountains (IIRC). The modem dpeed was in low one-digit bytes per second so you were careful thinking about what you send.
- nvahalik 2y agoMaybe this has been laid out elsewhere, but exactly what "science" is Voyager 1 doing at this point? It's taking "readings" of things that may simply help us to get some picture of where we live... but what value does it truly have?
- 31337Logic 2y agoWow. This comment broke my heart a little. :-(
- sokoloff 2y agoThis is a soft value, but I’m glad for every bit of Voyager news that comes out. I find it personally inspiring, think that’s probably true for others, and I’ll take as a small win anything that tends to inspire people about science (or STEM more generally).
- AdamN 2y agoThe measurements of the Heliopause are apparently new(ish) so data is coming in that is otherwise unavailable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Interstellar_medium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1#Interstellar_medium
- justsomehnguy 2y agoIn October 2020, astronomers reported a significant unexpected increase in density in the space beyond the Solar System as detected by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes. According to the researchers, this implies that "the density gradient is a large-scale feature of the VLISM (very local interstellar medium) in the general direction of the heliospheric nose".[89][90] In May 2021, NASA reported on the continuous measurement, for the first time, of the density of material in interstellar space and, as well, the detection of interstellar sounds for the first time.[91]
- zitterbewegung 2y agoOther taking a picture of where we live it is studying the boundary of our solar system (heliopause). We can't know what value of the readings will have in the future of the science being studying. The studies will end in 2025 when it won't be able to power any instrument.
- russfink 2y agoCool related link (from the same site) on the expected lifetime of the golden records - https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-distant-future https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-dist... 20,000 years until V1 transits the Oort Cloud. Twenty thousand years.
- russfink 2y agoWill we ever achieve near-light speed travel and catch up to these guys? Or do we first reach the point where we can upload our consciousnesses into machines (bio or silicon) such that speed no longer matters as much? Off topic a little, but I feel that Heinlein-esque generation ships or frozen embryo payloads carrying biology and all that bio requires are not the future of human expansion. I think it’s long-lived mechs carrying encodings of human neural pathways, with maybe just enough biology to generate randomness. (Could we make hearty fungi function as synapses?)
- Workaccount2 2y agoReminds me of the sci-fi trope where the first humans are sent off into deep space to reach a new habitable planet. And when they arrive it's already full of cities and life because their original ship was much slower than the high tech ships that came later, beating them by decades to the new planet.
- elcritch 2y agoI’d be pissed the newer ships didn’t stop and give me a lift! Rude of them.
- kyriakos 2y agoThis is part of the story of the new Peter F. Hamilton book "Exodus The Archimedes Engine" [1], which is also the basis for an upcoming game by ex-BioWare developers [2]. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/205670068-exodus https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/205670068-exodus [2] https://www.exodusgame.com/en-US https://www.exodusgame.com/en-US
- stronglikedan 2y agoConsidering the energy requirements for near-light speed travel, I'd bet on the latter, if I were a betting man.
- Gazoche 2y agoWe don't need to go that fast, Voyager 1 is only travelling at 6% of the speed of light. UPDATE: 0.006%, not 6%
- catskul2 2y ago> If that happens, the spacecraft will turn off all non-essential systems to conserve power and remain in flight. Uhhhhhh... I guess they mean "in operation"? Not sure how it could do anything but remain in flight.
- krunck 2y agoThose 47 year old caps in the radio still work. Kudos to the engineers.
- wtcactus 2y agoI’m constantly marveled at the reliability of an extremely complex machine, with hundreds of moving parts, that was built more than 50 years ago, in operation for 47 years, and built to operate for only 5 years.
- mike503 2y agoNobody is thinking of the original Star Trek?