Cool.


https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/nasa-voyager-1-resumes-data-after-outage


Cheers and applause erupted this weekend when NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft sent back the first usable data from interstellar space after a five-month communication gap.

Engineers with Voyager's flight team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have been troubleshooting an issue since November, when the spacecraft, more than 15.1 billion miles from Earth, began sending back nonsense computer code.

On Saturday, after 45 hours of waiting to find out if their plan to send the problem code elsewhere on the spacecraft’s computer would work, the team got its response.

"For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems," NASA JPL said in a blog. "The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again."

Earlier this year, NASA engineers honed in on one of three computers on the spacecraft, known as the Flight Data System (FDS), as the cause behind the communication problem.
An artist's concept of Voyager 1 entering interstellar space, or the space between the stars. Interstellar space is filled with plasma, ionized gas (shown as a brownish haze here), that was cast off by giant stars millions of years ago, NASA said.

"Its role is to basically collect all of the data from the science instruments and the spacecraft, package them all neatly up and send them back to the Earth," Voyager Program scientist Linda Spilker told FOX Weather in mid-March.

Eventually, the team discovered that the problem was a single chip responsible for storing part of the computer’s memory, including some of its software code.

According to NASA, the team decided to place the problem code elsewhere in the computer’s memory. However, no single location has enough space to hold the code section, so the code was divided into sections and sent to different places on the FDS.

On April 18, the team sent the first section of code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. It takes 22.5 hours to send a radio signal with the repair to Voyager 1 and another 22.5 hours to receive a signal back to Earth.

"When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft," NASA said.

This isn’t the first scare for either of NASA's twin interstellar spacecraft, which started as a 5-year mission and has now been operating for 46 years.

Another issue with garbled data for Voyager 1 in 2022 was fixed over several months. In 1981, the team experienced a similar communication issue to the current problem.

Voyager 2 is currently operating normally more than 12.6 billion miles from Earth. Last year, an incorrect command sent Voyager 2 pointing away from Earth, preventing it from sending back data. Teams were able to send a patch and reorient the spacecraft.

In the coming weeks, more commands will be sent to relocate Voyager 1's problem code and adjust the FDS software. Eventually, the spacecraft will begin returning science data.

Neat

If it had a camera on it, what's it seeing right now?  Just blackness or would there be a decent light show?

Wonder if it will effect battery life.

Cool they were able to by-pass the bad chip.

It’s crazy that it’s nearly a light-day from earth.

It has a camera but not enough power to run it, and it'd just see the sun as a distant largish star.

There's a solar system pic it took when it still worked, I'll see if I can find it.

ETA: These wwere taken when V1 was much, much closer.

It has an atomic power supply.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-will-do-more-science-with-new-power-strategy


Both Voyager probes power themselves with radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs)

The Aliens captured it, did experiments or tweaks and released it back into the wild.

I saw a documentary about that.

It changed it's name to V'Ger.

The aliens let it go?

This is so fucking cool. With all the bullshit going on back here on Earth, and society seemingly falling apart, it's cathartic to think about the amazing things man can accomplish when striving towards a singular goal, and not being pawns in a rigged game.

Its all fake.

46 years!  So the original team have long since retired and some passed away and now another generation is working the Pioneer projects!

What do these people do all day?

Anyway, it’s impressive they still work, they sure knew how to build them.

It’s really too bad they can’t send photos, probably nothing to see, but I’m a voyeur.

We're in trouble

Super neat.

15 billion miles away and it still responds faster than the DMV.

Did Voyager collide with another probe?

So is it in a different solar system now?  Crazy to think how far away it is, and still sending back data.

Cloned.

Forgot that episode, its been done Jim!

No...the nearest star is Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light years from earth.

Voyager is almost 1 light day from earth.   We are still on the porch waving goodbye.

Attached File

VGER must learn.

I was in Junior high when it launched.

interstellar space, or the space between the stars. Interstellar space is filled with plasma, ionized gas

It’s right in the OP.

https://www.space.com/interstellar-space-definition-explanation

Looks cold and dark

NASA is one of the few things I do believe our government should spend money on. Understanding and exploring space has huge national security importance.

Well, that's some good news today!  Thanks, OP!

And it only took 46 years.

I had to go searching for dates because the Star Trek original series was canceled before Voager was launched. Then I realized VGER was in the motion picture, not the TV series, which was after Voyager was launched.  So that makes sense.  I thought I'd found some kind of timeline error or something.

And it took 43 years to get that distance. And it's the fastest probe leaving the solar system, traveling at 38,000 MPH.

NASA should release the source code for it.  It would be pretty interesting.  Not like anyone could hijack it, who the hell could transmit to it other than NASA?

I thought VGER was found by Capt. Kirk already.

I've been really interested in how they've either modernized or virtualized the software environment of the original Voyager control systems but can find basically no information on it online.

I'm just utterly astonished that they've managed to keep the thing running.  The code is ancient, the chips and boards on it ancient, the people who built it are ancient.

NASA has some of the smartest people in the world working for it, and yet they had to find people who understood that old tech and managed to find a way to move that code around between three storage medium at these distances.  That's just incredible, really.

Really a feel-good story

What kind of volatile memory did they have 46 years ago?  Wasn't most memory stored on tape?  I remember cassette tape drives in the early 80s before floppy disks.  Maybe there were early hard disk drives?

Nope, looks like they store memory on 8 track tapes!

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/money/business/2017/08/24/voyagers-technology-little-memory-goes-long-way/104908888/

Amazing

The most astonishing thing about this, 15 billion miles is .002557 light years and the universe is estimated to be 90 plus billion light years across

“Outage”

It's nuts that a 22 watt transmitter can do that.

Attached File

In before Vger…

My dad would tell stories about having weekly code reviews to cut extraneous bytes when he worked for the Navy in the 60s to 80s. Usually while I was trying to rewrite config.sys and autoexec.bat to get a new game to work on my computer.  

Kharn

A dos star trek game taught me all I needed to know about loading/unloading drivers and managing lower and upper memory on startup... and this was before having internet.

DEI made that.

Yup.

Elon

Would be epic if he programmed it to turn around and come back.

Yeah, I remember that! And boot discs!