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NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating
- mmooss 6mo ago> Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room. They are using the time to finalize a more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers they call “the Big Bang,” which is designed to further extend Voyager operations. The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data. > The team will implement the Big Bang on Voyager 2 first, which has a little more power to spare and is closer to Earth, making it the safer test subject. Tests are planned for May and June 2026. If they go well, the team will attempt the same fix on Voyager 1 no sooner than July. If it works, there is even a chance that Voyager 1’s LECP could be switched back on. Voyager 1 has only a year left otherwise? Also, what low-powered alternatives are there? Is there that much redundancy? I'd love to know what their idea and plan are? Also, > For Voyager 1, the LECP was next on that list. The team shut off the LECP on Voyager 2 in March 2025. Why? Voyager 2 has more power to spare, per the prior quote.
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 6mo ago> Why? Voyager 2 has more power to spare, per the prior quote. Because Voyager 2 has different equipment active. It still has the Cosmic Ray Subsystem active.
- mmooss 6mo ago> the sequence of commands to shut down the instrument will take 23 or so hours to reach the spacecraft Closing in on one light day!
- jedberg 6mo agoImagine deploying your bug fix and having to wait two days to find out if it worked!
- bluedino 6mo agoAn old timer once told me about how he would read his printouts, make new punch cards, send them over to the main office, someone would put the new cards into the system the next morning, and then read the printouts on the day after that to see if his code worked or not.
- wpollock 6mo agoThis. Except worse, during busy days you had to stand on line for an hour or more for a turn on the machines. I believe the skill of debugging by mentally stepping through a program's execution came from such long run times, a useful skill many younger programmers lack.
- whartung 6mo ago> a useful skill many younger programmers lack. Because it’s unnecessary. It’s not a difficult skill. When folks are in that situation, they tend to adapt quickly to their reality. But that’s not the reality for the vast majority of developers today. Thankfully.
- XorNot 6mo agoYep I really hate the characterisation that tried to imply people are weaker or worse because they lack a contextually relevant skill. I spent about 6 months teaching myself how to tie a set of useful knots, and the reality is by now I can't do most of them anymore because day to day it turns out I just never need to tie a Midshipmen's knot (it's super useful when the siruation arises..which is rarely for an IT worker).
- keybored 6mo agoI want to learn that. It’s just silicone. Who hard could it be?
- cindyllm 6mo ago
- musicale 6mo agoAmazing that this spacecraft has been operating for nearly half a century.
- virgildotcodes 6mo agoMay the same be true of my vibe coded b2b SaaSes.
- mvkel 6mo agoJust have to nuke it into orbit!
- ndiddy 6mo agoIf anybody wants further context, here's an excellent paper on the status of the Voyager mission as of 2016, written by one of the engineers at JPL. It has an overview of what all the instruments on Voyager do and everything the team had done to keep the mission going as of that point. https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/VIMChallenges.pdf https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/VIMChallenges.pdf I also highly recommend the documentary "It's Quieter in the Twilight" which is about the entire Voyager team and their efforts to keep the program operational.
- mek6800d2 6mo agoFor others, this truly excellent 2016 paper is "Voyager Interstellar Mission: Challenges of Flying a Very Old Spacecraft on a Very Long Mission" by Sun Kang Matsumoto. She was/is a Voyager Fault Protection and CCS Flight Software Systems Engineer (CCS was the onboard command computer) and she was also one of the "stars" in It's Quieter in the Twilight.
- junon 6mo agoCurious, has Voyager 1 brought in any data in recent years that is scientifically meaningful? Not to put down the efforts of keeping it alive, I love that. Just wonder how much of its task is "done".
- sho_hn 6mo agoe.g. 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... [2021]
- tokai 6mo agoI can really recommend the documentary It's Quieter in the Twilight. It covers the flight-team operating Voyager, and shows in-depth what they and Voyager is doing.
- DriftRegion 6mo agoThanks, I enjoyed that.
- s0rce 6mo agoFrom the article: “Voyager 1 still has two remaining operating science instruments — one that listens to plasma waves and one that measures magnetic fields. They are still working great, sending back data from a region of space no other human-made craft has ever explored. The team remains focused on keeping both Voyagers going for as long as possible.”
- goldfishgold 6mo agoyeah the sparse data being returned from Voyager are the only direct observations ever made of the outer solar system / beyond. Even if the data is humdrum and exactly as expected, that in itself is worth something.
- krisoft 6mo ago
- cosmic_cheese 6mo agoI think there’s going to be more than a few people feeling a little emotional when the days that the Voyagers go dark come. What magnificent machines.
- codetiger 6mo agoI hope not to see that day
- sbierwagen 6mo agoAre you planning on dying before 2036? That's one estimate for when they'll run out of power.
- subscribed 6mo agoThat's a dark question inviting unnecessary "yeah, why not?" I think it wasn't intended.
- codetiger 6mo agoWith little what I know of Voyager, the beautiful machine has broke all previous estimates. And thus hoping it will last until we have another such machine overtake the distance before this one goes into total shutdown
- bonzini 6mo agoUnfortunately the lifetime of the plutonium RTG is very very predictable (due to the half life of the isotope they use). They are constantly shutting down parts of the probe exactly because the RTG is providing less and less power, and at some point it won't even be enough to heat the probe and run the computers.
- cocothem 6mo agoAround 2030–2036, the power will likely drop below the level needed to run even a single instrument. At that point, Voyager 1 will officially "die" as a scientific mission. But Voyager will keep going forever. Because there is no air resistance or friction in the vacuum of space, Voyager 1 doesn't need "fuel" to keep moving. According to Newton’s First Law of Motion, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force. Since there's nothing out there to stop it, it will continue its journey long after its systems go dark. In 40,000 years: It will pass within 1.7 light-years of the star AC+79 3888 in the constellation Ursa Minor. In 300,000 years: It might pass near the star Sirius. The Long Haul: It is expected to orbit the center of our Milky Way galaxy indefinitely, potentially for billions of years, carrying the "Golden Record" as a final message from humanity. Fun Fact: If Voyager 1 were to hit a pebble-sized object at its current speed, it would be catastrophic. Fortunately, space is so incredibly empty that the odds of it hitting anything larger than a dust grain for the next several billion years are nearly zero
- accrual 6mo ago> During a routine, planned roll maneuver on Feb. 27 It's amazing not only are the electrical components still operational, but some mechanical ones as well.
- userbinator 6mo agoThere's quite a lot of machinery from that era (and older) still functioning today, so it's not that surprising to see the same of this probe that was specifically designed for space travel.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- kalleboo 6mo agoIt uses a tape drive to record observations and radio them back to earth. I find it amazing to imagine a single reel of tape (and the belts in the drive) still being reliable 48 years later...
- anjel 6mo agoPlanned obsolescence is a choice, not a likelihood
- reader9274 6mo agoI had the honor and pleasure to take a class from the venerable professor, JPL director, and Voyager project scientist Ed Stone at Caltech in 2018. He excitedly told us a "secret" on November 1st that Voyager 2 had reached interstellar space, and he showed us the actual data proving it. But we had to keep it a secret until the press release that Monday, November 5. It was a special moment to see his passion for the project almost 50 years in, and felt incredibly special to hear it directly from him. RIP professor.
- qweqweqwe1 6mo ago[flagged]
- avian 6mo agoNot to detract from the amazing success that is Voyager - I also still remember attending a lecture given by a JPL engineer that worked on one of the instruments - but I feel like the "Voyager has reached interstellar space" thing has been milked to death by PR. There was a period where I feel like there was one such announcement published in media each month with very unsatisfactory explanation (if any) how it differs from the last one.
- avian 6mo agoBecause this is getting downvoted, and to check if my memory serves me well: Here's an excerpt from a 2013 article in Scientific American that appears on the first page of results when searching for "voyager left the solar system" [1]: > Voyager 1 was starting to get a reputation as the spacecraft that cried wolf, after scientists repeatedly claimed it was leaving the solar system, only to change their minds and say it wasn’t quite there yet. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/voyager-1-leaves-solar-system/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/voyager-1-leaves-...
- iamgopal 6mo agoCan we send faster better equipped craft to move past solar system in a year or two ?
- vitaflo 6mo agoThe planetary alignment that allowed the Voyager probes to move so fast only occurs every 175 years. Even with this advantage it took them 12 years to get to Neptune. So the short answer is no.
- saidinesh5 6mo agoBut without the planetary alignment, can't we just rely on brute force ? Better fuel and bigger engines?
- tredre3 6mo agoThe truth is that, as much as people LOVE bringing it up, the alignment was special only because it allowed us to slingshot from body to body with almost no fuel aboard the probe itself. That's it. Nothing to do with speed. We could launch something that goes way faster right now, if someone wanted to pay for it. Hell, we could have done it 50 years ago. We didn't because it would go in a straight line towards "nothing".
- bpodgursky 6mo agoNASA under Isaacman is newly, more seriously, exploring nuclear propulsion. If they really do pull the trigger, the answer is definitely yes.
- smcin 6mo agoThe next planetary alignment will be in the mid-2150s.
- theandrewbailey 6mo agoNew Horizons made it to Pluto in less than 10 years. Technically faster, but still not a year or two.
- anigbrowl 6mo agoIt continues to irritate me that There aren't any other functioning deep space probes besides New Horizons (launched in 2006, and which flies at a slower speed than Voyagers). One new operating deep space probe in nearly 50 years is just embarrassing. I mean yay space telescopes and everything, but we seem to have given up anything that isn't a state-of-the-art prestige project. I was hopeful about projects like Breakthrough starshot but that seems to have stalled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
- nmbrskeptix 6mo agoThe voyagers had a planetary alignment working for them
- bombcar 6mo agoIsn't a big part of the problem that the voyager slingshot is one of the best you can get, and it's a once in multiple-lifetimes event? Even if we launch a new deep space probe as best we can they're gonna be real slow?
- monocasa 6mo agoFor Voyager 1, Jupiter's gravity assist was the only one that increased velocity, the flybys ultimately sapped velocity.
- NooneAtAll3 6mo agoapparently not so https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/70473 https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/70473
- dylan604 6mo agoNew Horizons is faster than Voyagers and did not require an alignment.
- bombcar 6mo ago
- ritcgab 6mo agoI hope the voyagers can last longer. We are trapped on Earth, but it is just fascinating (and relieving) thinking of them expanding the boundary of human's space adventure.
- SilentM68 6mo agoIdeally, just how much longer can the crafts keep going even with the "Big Bang" fix, given the old hardware that they carry?
- helsinkiandrew 6mo ago> They are still working great, sending back data from a region of space no other human-made craft has ever explored Unlike the non human-made craft in the region?
- homarp 6mo agolike meteorites?
- helsinkiandrew 6mo agoCraft?
- toyg 6mo agoWell, we don't know about them, do we? Technically speaking, some alien might have already plotted the entire Milky Way hundreds of years ago without telling us.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- peteforde 6mo agoI would love to better understand how a device launched the year before I was born could be so flexible in its configuration and operation. I can't update the code running on a microcontroller on my desk in front of me without it triggering a reboot. When they talk about rerouting power and performing a "big bang" reconfiguration with a 23 hour lag on equipment that was underpowered when the 8088 came out... it kind of melts my brain. Apparently it still has ten years worth of fuel left!
- Evidlo 6mo ago> microcontroller on my desk in front of me without it triggering a reboot Most microcontrollers can update their own flash while running, either with a built-in bootloader or a user-programmed bootloader that takes up a little bit of the flash. What makes you think that Voyager isn't "rebooted" though?
- mananaysiempre 6mo agoThis kind of update is often kind of ass to do, though, because you may not be able to execute from said flash while you’re updating it. So you copy a small write routine into RAM, copy a chunk of new data there too, jump to the routine, then it returns to your main bootloader in flash which receives the next chunk from a UART or whatever (because of course it doesn’t fit into RAM all at once), rinse and repeat. You aren’t exactly going to be serving realtime interrupts during this. (So if you do need minimal downtime, you probably have dual external flash chips, or even just two microcontrollers given execute-from-external-flash would bump you up to fancy micros.)
- tavavex 6mo agoNASA pioneered a lot of what underpins modern design of critical computer systems. Voyager's systems are impressively robust. As far as I know, they can patch it by directly sending up new assembly instructions that are written into its memory, and doing a warm reboot to get it to start executing new instructions without powering down anything. They had the foresight to make their software highly editable, while also having multiple redundancy and emergency systems. Despite this, I wonder how much pressure the people writing this software feel. Even with all the simulators and months of rigorous testing, sending up something that can (in the worst case) break the probe has to be terrifying.
- tavavex 6mo agoIs there an exhaustive list of all the systems and experiments that are still running on these probes? I'm really curious about what data it's collecting and sending back to us.
- sudo_cowsay 6mo agohere: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/instruments/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/instruments/
- tavavex 6mo agoThanks! Looks like it's just the magnetometer and a receiver instrument. Once the pool of instruments runs dry, I wonder how thinly they'll be able to slice the functionality of the remaining, non-experimental systems to prolong their lifetime as much as possible.
- digitalShield 6mo ago[flagged]
- Qem 6mo agoReminds me of this: https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/the-suit https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/the-suit