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NASA keeps ancient Voyager 1 spacecraft alive with Hail Mary thruster fix
- mrbluecoat 1y agoSuch a beautiful tribute to the tenacity of humanity's creativity to beat the odds.
- gerdesj 1y ago... and good old school engineering. Proper job.
- jmclnx 1y agoVery nice, amazing they were able to keep them working. I remember when they were launched, I saw an article saying somehow the engineers added better components some functionalities even when they were forbidden. Somehow they hid it. I forgot exactly what the articles said, but it indicated this was done due to a once in many centuries of the alignment.
- mncharity 1y agoIt's Quieter in the Twilight[1] is a 2022 film about associated engineers. [1] Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJT8AW0wYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJT8AW0wYw , Free with ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIP1p5gAoak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIP1p5gAoak
- mek6800d2 1y agoPart of this excellent movie revolved around the months-long shutdown of the 70-meter antenna at the Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia. Coincidentally, the new JPL press release about Voyager 1's thrusters also details a new months-long shutdown (May 2025-Feb 2026) of that same antenna for more upgrades. It's the only antenna that can transmit to Voyager 2, which flew south of the ecliptic after its Neptune flyby. The DSN stations in Spain and California can still transmit to Voyager 1, which flew north of the ecliptic after its Saturn flyby. (Todd Barber, quoted in the The Register article and in JPL's press release, appears in the movie.)
- bguberfain 1y agoNot available in my country :(
- wileydragonfly 1y agoThis is hacker news. Fix it.
- beAbU 1y agohttps://therarbg.to/post-detail/49665e/its-quieter-in-the-twilight-2022-1080p-webrip-x265-rarbg-tgx/ https://therarbg.to/post-detail/49665e/its-quieter-in-the-tw...
- atoav 1y agoOn the internet nobody has to know you're in your country.
- thenthenthen 1y agoObviously ‘they’ do. RIP ‘Inter’net
- zorkso 1y agoThanks for the recommendation! I watched this last night and really enjoyed hearing from the folks keeping it going.
- jakeinspace 1y agoI can't imagine how rewarding it would be to push this fix and, after many hours, get confirmation of success. I'd be chasing that high the rest of my career.
- rudyfink 1y agoObviously, it's a great outcome that it worked. But the alternative--"it could trigger a small explosion," JPL noted--would have been interesting too. A sort of in fire or in ice outcome. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice
- thom 1y agoLess impactful obviously, but might I recommend correspondence chess? You will live with constant reminders that past you was either a genius or a moron.
- CableNinja 1y agoI dont need chess for that, my life is perfectly capable of reminding me that i was either really smart or really stupid, often enough
- woleium 1y agoredhotpawn.com is still a thing!
- BrtByte 1y agoYou're literally reaching across billions of miles to bring something back to life that everyone thought was gone.
- DocTomoe 1y agoOf course, when you fail, you'll be 'that guy who bricked Voyager I' forevermore. Just imagine the pressure before sending that commit.
- 1y ago
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoSource: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-revives-backup-thrusters-before-command-pause/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-revives-backup... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43997081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43997081)
- ednite 1y agoMoments like this remind me exactly why the hairs on my arms stand up every time I see the NASA logo. It’s not just science, it’s the amazing inspiring human achievement. Incredible work, NASA team.
- CobrastanJorji 1y agoIt's frankly bonkers how many insane success-at-long-odds stories NASA has and how few "we made a stupid mistake and everything exploded" stories NASA has. For every Climate Orbiter "we made an oopsie converting metric to imperial" story, there are three "we figured out how to get the crew of Apollo 13 to fit a square peg into a round hole and they can breath now" miracles. I mean, sure, there's Apollo 1's "we put people and a bunch of wires in a pressurized can of pure oxygen", but there's also the Perseverance Rover's "we made a crane that holds itself aloft with rockets and lowers a one ton rover gently to the ground on a tether."
- voidspark 1y agoTwo space shuttles exploded, killing everyone on board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaste...
- cr125rider 1y agoAnd a bunch of other missions worked great. Learn from failures, progress.
- voidspark 1y agoYeah it's not "bonkers" or "insane". They learned the hard way. Painful lessons.
- jaredhansen 1y agoGood point, let's just shut it down, nobody should do anything
- hliyan 1y agoIncredible that they're doing over the air updates for a piece of 50 year old technology using an extremely low bandwidth link, with hours of latency, with no physical access, and doing so without ever permanently losing the link or bricking the device. I looked into its Viking Computer Command Subsystem (CCS), but there's little documentation out there.
- LeoPanthera 1y agoThey’re not always so lucky. Mars Global Surveyor was bricked with a bad update.
- mystified5016 1y agoNo air in space. Over the void updates?
- crazydoggers 1y agoCan’t wait until V’Ger comes back to visit us in the 23rd century to tell us about its travels. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Pictur...
- runeb 1y ago> The backup roll thrusters in use are now at risk due to residue buildup in their fuel lines Such a human experience this probe is having
- perihelions 1y ago"The backup roll thrusters in use are now at risk due to residue buildup in their fuel lines, which could cause failure as early as this fall." If anyone was curious where residue comes from in hypergolic fuel systems, the answer is it's SiO2 (silica) from decaying rubber components, "After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft’s fuel tank". ┕ https://science.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-program/voyager-1/voyager-1-team-accomplishes-tricky-thruster-swap/ https://science.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-program/voyager-1/... An HN commenter tracked down relevant documentation on NTRS, "They expel the Hydrazine(N2H4) fuel out of a spherical Ti tank by inflating a rubber balloon that involve Teflon inside the tank using helium supply. I guess N2H4 was potent enough to degrade even those space age materials." https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19810001583/downloads/19810001583.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19810001583/downloads/19... ┕ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41525267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41525267
- clot27 1y agoCold war was best thing happened to humanity for space exploration. AMAZING. I hope we see it again
- anadem 1y ago> Cold war was best thing ... I hope we see it again Ummm, no thanks
- DiggyJohnson 1y agoYou elided the crucial part of the statement…
- gcanyon 1y agoYou might enjoy For All Mankind -- it proposes exactly that the space race never ended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series)
- nektro 1y agoNASA is truly one of the most inspiring organizations out there
- verisimi 1y agoYes, it is a source of endless, impossible, triumphant, science stories.
- rapjr9 1y agoWhy hasn't anyone launched deep space probes intentionally to get the kind of data the Voyager probes are sending? Seems like a purpose designed probe could last even longer.
- withinboredom 1y agoIt would take generations to get there (if at all). The whole reason these could make it out there was due to a planetary alignment for gravity assists to allow them to reach escape velocity of the solar system. I'm not sure we could reach such velocities without that.
- rapjr9 1y agoWas the planetary alignment that rare? Seems like it would be a good investment in science even if it takes decades to reach deep space.
- withinboredom 1y agoI don't remember the exact numbers, but it's an alignment that only happens every hundred years or so.
- bluGill 1y agoThat one in once in several hundred years. they were mostly interested in visiting 5 planets though not getting out. There may be other orbits that allow for more speed but skip something - I'm not an orbital engineer so I don't know how to calculate that. there is a lot more to learn about planets than what is outside the solar system so there is much point in a dedicated misson out. We still won't reach any other star for thousands of years, and have no power supply that will last that long. (there are things to learn out side our solar system, but most of it we can learn with a telescope from earth)
- ahazred8ta 1y agoJupiter and Saturn line up every 20 years, and after Saturn you can choose trajectories that can reach half the outer solar system. In the 1970s Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were in that half. They almost decided to send Voyager 1 on a course from Saturn to Pluto instead of taking a closer look at Titan and going north out of plane.
- flowerthoughts 1y agoI think I'm getting more emotional over the years. I'm pretty sure I'll actually cry when we lose connection to this amazing device. I'd bow profusely to anyone who has been part of keeping it active. (The conspiracy theorist in me could argue that since not much is happening in outer space, perhaps no one would notice if they started synthesizing responses from it. If they could do it so convincingly with the moon landing, surely this would be easier? /s)
- whycome 1y agoMaybe aliens already captured it and are simulating the responses? Or the simulation controllers are doing it.
- BrtByte 1y agoIt's amazing to think we're still in touch with something launched in 1977, still doing science, still responding to commands... even if we have to wait 23 hours to find out if it worked
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>we have to wait 23 hours to find out if it worked Still quicker than my last offshore team.
- mek6800d2 1y ago46 hours ... if you're lucky! :) 23 hours for a command to reach the spacecraft and 23 hours more for the spacecraft's response to reach Earth. If you're lucky: the Voyager project has to compete with other projects for antenna time on the Deep Space Network. If they can't get two slots 46 hours apart, they rely on delayed telemetry to verify that a command was received and successfully processed.
- CableNinja 1y agoAfaik we always have at least one downlink dish pointed at voyager all the time. At least, last i saw the DSN site
- mek6800d2 1y ago70-meter dish antennas are needed to transmit to Voyager and there is one 70-m dish at each of the 3 DSN stations in California, Spain, and Australia. The Australian station is the only one that can see Voyager 2 and because of the Earth's rotation, that's only for part of the day. Downlink can make use of smaller arrayed antennas (including non-DSN antennas), but I still think they have to be scheduled; i.e., the antennas have to be pointed at the Voyager spacecraft and computer time for ground system DSN processing of downlink data has to be allocated. I don't know for sure though, so you may be right.
- imhoguy 1y agoIt may be survivorship bias but I can't imagine current so complex and fragile engineering achieving such durability. Once you apply vibe-engineering to everything how we can even keep anything working beyond 1 year warranty. You can't RMA space probes. But maybe we should send 50000 cheap (fr)agile probes like Starlinks into deep space and push updates randomly. Maybe just one makes it over 50 years mark. Ah, and we should call it Starsperm. I think I should add "/s" here.
- minetest2048 1y agoBreakthrough Starshot StarChip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot#StarChip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot#StarChip) is the closest thing: > StarChip is the name used by Breakthrough Initiatives for a very small, centimeter-sized, gram-scale, interstellar spacecraft envisioned for the Breakthrough Starshot program,[1][36] a proposed mission to propel a fleet of a thousand StarChips on a journey to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, about 4.37 light-years from Earth
- Evidlo 1y agoGot an internship offer this Summer to work at JPL on the Deep Space Network, but had to turn it down to finish my graduate degree. Would have liked to have been there while this was going on! Hopefully I can get lucky again, but funding is in trouble these days.
- ashoeafoot 1y agoYou know what we should do?We should find the guy who designed that thrusters system and chew him out in public for great catharsis and not future prooofing...
- andrelaszlo 1y agoAny reading recommendations about leadership at NASA? It amazes me that they've delivered do much value, often very quickly, despite being such a large, complex organization.
- mek6800d2 1y agoI recently started reading Peter Westwick's 2007 book, Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976-2004. I've only gotten up into the 1980s so far and I find it a good read. Leadership? Sausage making. Per Westwick, there have always been contentious relations between NASA headquarters, the different NASA centers, JPL, and Caltech. (JPL is a NASA center, but staffed by Caltech employees, and relations between JPL and Caltech themselves are often strained.) At JPL, there were frequent shufflings of people in leadership roles. Add in the politics of the whole thing and trying to get funding from the government. If the Reagan administration had fully had their way, there wouldn't have been Voyager 2 flybys of Uranus and Neptune. Fortunately, many politicians (like Newt Gingrich, of all people!) supported NASA. (Westwick discusses all of this in his book.) So my impression is that we were incredibly lucky that Voyager worked out so well in spite of its chaotic existence from its earliest developmental stages to now. I suppose there are some leadership lessons, but survivorship bias must be accounted for as many projects didn't make it off the drawing board.
- deadbabe 1y agoIt’s crazy to think someday they’ll be an article here on Hackernews declaring that we’ve be unable to contact Voyager 1, and that we’ll probably never hear from it again. Could be soon. When that day comes, we should have links to all these articles compiled in a list. The upvotes should be glorious.
- Cymatickot 1y agoPerfect case study for programmers desing long term critical systems. With all our fancy "frameworks", there is Voyager 1, who is 15.6 billion miles away running on simple logic with limited change options.
- xg15 1y agoIt's amazing that they managed to do that - but the frequency of those "NASA used insane engineering hack to circumvent yet another failing system on Voyager 1/2" articles seems to be sharply increasing lately. Seems like a sign to me that we are nearing the eventual end of life of the probes, despite all the incredible achievements.
- wileydragonfly 1y agoThey’re currently facing budget cuts and always push tons of stories about how amazing they are in response.