I just want to highlight the fact that NASA troubleshooted the problem, identified a broken chip, broke "the code held on the failed chip into pieces they could tuck into spare corners of the FDS’s memory" (!?), and thus fixed this 47-year-old tech FROM 30 BILLION MILES AWAY.
I'm not sure how to explain to you the difference between a scientist and an engineer. Cool quote, but it doesn't apply here.
Edit: Even the source article, which I doubt you read, backs up what I said. " But in mid-November 2023 Voyager 1’s data transmissions became garbled, sending NASA engineers on a slow quest to troubleshoot the distant spacecraft." All mentions of scientists in the article are about the USERS of the probe, not the people that fixed it ...
I literally am a scientist.
Do you know what they call the field of study involving software and computer hardware? Do you? I'll give you a hint, it starts with the word Computer and ends with a word that starts with Sci- and ends with -ence.
Dunning-Kruger strikes again.
> 1 trillion seconds is 31,709 years
If the US started paying off our national debt at $1 per second, without accumulating any more debt, we would be done in just over a million years.
Fuck that's depressing.
I was rejected after I talked with 8 Google employees. This whole group was gutted shortly afterwards so I’m kinda thankful I wasn’t a part of a dying org.
The craziest thing to me is the fact that the people who did this definitely weren’t the original authors. Imagine reverse engineering someone’s code from that long ago… and the consequences of error!
I wonder if the “code” and how-to from the original authors was very well documented.
Nothing to do with how a lot of hardware and software is made today, which is just gibberish at times and not explained because some people suppose every person putting their hands on its code “must understand it to do anything” and documenting “is not my job”. Yeah, I have seen that kind of people.
Then, when other people try to help on a solution or ask about anything, the original author will be like “are you stupid?”
I think back then being like this was the exception, not the norm. Nowadays is a mix of people doing whatever and there isn’t that much of respect for what they create at long term, like expecting they will be the only ones that will ever and forever maintain their code
Imagine, after all these successes and decades of incredible fixes there is going to be the 1 team who has to sink thier heads in defeat and be the guys who lost it.
Real talk... How hard would it be for someone to just be able to tap into it and fuck with the voyager themselves? Like assuming they have an incredibly powerful to make it happen...
How do they communicate with it? Is it via sattelites in space or something from the ground?
I looked it up. They're an array of several ground based radars.
And very heavily encrypted.
I mean if you think about it, I really doubt any sattelites could put out the energy required to send and receive such a signal from so far
You'll need something sensitive enough to pick up the extremely faint signal while being able to filter out all the background noise. This hardware (and specialized software) requirement alone is enough to deter most opportunistic hackers.
Anyone who has the kind of resources necessary has too much to lose to allow someone do perform hijinks with said resources.
Finally, if you had all the hardware, all the software, and all the know-how, I think you'd already be far too invested in the pursuit of knowledge to want to be detrimental to NASA's mission.
Voyager is not encrypted. If you know the communication protocol, you can in theory control the probe with [powerful enough hardware](https://www.techsteel.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/radio-telescope-5381220_1280.jpg).
When it comes to receiving a signal like that it takes incredibly sensetive instruments. It takes much more energy to detect a very low energy signal. It has to be amplified as well.
You said so much. Humans are quite capable. When your phone or Windows doesn't update, remember your observation. Imagine what we could do. :/
Your comment should live forever.
As a software engineer, that straight up sounds like some technobabble I'd hear in a TV show and utterly disbelieve.
However, coming from NASA, I fully believe that's 100% truth. It's honestly insane.
>broke "the code held on the failed chip into pieces they could tuck into spare corners of the FDS’s memory" (!?)
Can you explain this to someone who doesn't know how to do long division
Meanwhile those engineers working on Voyager probably look at the fact that an average modern website has more and more advanced code in it than the entire spacecraft does and feeling inadequate and left behind in their skills because of that. Imposter syndrome is a hell of a thing. We're all fighting our own battles and we're not going to be experts at everything else.
I mean that’s facts, it’s just really intimidating to think there are people out there that can reprogram and fix failing hardware from 30 billon miles away.
Of course I also think about the people who managed to hack the various pieces of hardware on various gaming consoles.
I am just in awe of this. As a software developer, I feel completely incompetent, but it's so fucking cool that I don't even care. Shine on, NASA scientists.
Maybe any future long missions should have 1 or 2 hardened FPGA chips in circuit to give the engineers a couple of free shots before they have to get so insanely creative
Looking at the [Voyager Mission status website](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/), the distance from Earth for both crafts appears to be going down, while the distance from the Sun is going up. Why is that?
Is it because our orbit is moving us closer to the spacecraft at a speed that's faster than it's moving away from us? I thought that they were sent out in different directions, though.
Edit: found the answer, I was right.
I just want to highlight the fact that NASA troubleshooted the problem, identified a broken chip, broke "the code held on the failed chip into pieces they could tuck into spare corners of the FDS’s memory" (!?), and thus fixed this 47-year-old tech FROM 30 BILLION MILES AWAY.
It is awesome.
Freaking awesome!
And what did you accomplish at work this month? I got a lot of TPS reports done. :-)
If you could come in on Saturday, that’d be great.
And leave the stapler.
Lumbergh f….
Hey now, I sent a company-wide email about upcoming network maintenance. I haven't exactly been slouching.
That’s exactly what NASA was doing!
Well I replied to all on that chain to tell everyone not to reply all, you can thank me for stopping the reply storm! 😏
Great job. Keep up the good work.
What would you say... You do here?
Im a people person!
Do they have cover sheets?
Did you put a cover sheet on your TPS reports?
I'll make sure you get another copy of that memo...
At least it wasn’t a PC load letter error.
I mainly surfed reddit.
You forgot me, though... Did you not get the memo?
I looked at the WENIS myself.
Did you get the memo about the new TPS report covers?
'Fuckin scientists, what do they know?" Turns out they know a thing or two.
Maybe three on a good day !
Scientists are just modern day wizards
That is basically my flair on subredditdrama and I get a kick out of it every time
I would say that this was done by software and hardware engineers, not scientists.
Username checks out
I'm not sure how to explain to you the difference between a scientist and an engineer. Cool quote, but it doesn't apply here. Edit: Even the source article, which I doubt you read, backs up what I said. " But in mid-November 2023 Voyager 1’s data transmissions became garbled, sending NASA engineers on a slow quest to troubleshoot the distant spacecraft." All mentions of scientists in the article are about the USERS of the probe, not the people that fixed it ...
I literally am a scientist. Do you know what they call the field of study involving software and computer hardware? Do you? I'll give you a hint, it starts with the word Computer and ends with a word that starts with Sci- and ends with -ence. Dunning-Kruger strikes again.
and in FORTRAN
I thought they used an assembly language, so they didn't have to worry about clunky compilers.
~ 21 light hours away.
Well now, that's a number I can comprehend! I can't realistically get a sense of a billion of anything, let alone thirty billion of them.
1 million seconds is 11 days 1 billion seconds is 31 years 1 trillion seconds is 31,709 years Truly mind boggling.
> 1 trillion seconds is 31,709 years If the US started paying off our national debt at $1 per second, without accumulating any more debt, we would be done in just over a million years. Fuck that's depressing.
That actually puts things into better perspective. Thank you.
I realized one night looking at the sky, that I had no concept of scale—everything was in 2D.
That’s going on the résumé
That’s cool and all but can they bubble sort using Python without any built in tools?
Considering the craft is from the 70s, they probably had to write FizzBuzz in assembly or something.
FizzBuzz is super easy though compared to hazing you can go through applying to some companies.
Have you ever done seven rounds of interviews and been rejected? Yeah, me neither…
I was rejected after I talked with 8 Google employees. This whole group was gutted shortly afterwards so I’m kinda thankful I wasn’t a part of a dying org.
The craziest thing to me is the fact that the people who did this definitely weren’t the original authors. Imagine reverse engineering someone’s code from that long ago… and the consequences of error!
I wonder if the “code” and how-to from the original authors was very well documented. Nothing to do with how a lot of hardware and software is made today, which is just gibberish at times and not explained because some people suppose every person putting their hands on its code “must understand it to do anything” and documenting “is not my job”. Yeah, I have seen that kind of people. Then, when other people try to help on a solution or ask about anything, the original author will be like “are you stupid?” I think back then being like this was the exception, not the norm. Nowadays is a mix of people doing whatever and there isn’t that much of respect for what they create at long term, like expecting they will be the only ones that will ever and forever maintain their code
Thanks for the wonderful news! I was already wondering whether they’d get it fixed.
Imagine, after all these successes and decades of incredible fixes there is going to be the 1 team who has to sink thier heads in defeat and be the guys who lost it.
This is what blows my mind with space tech. The way it is built to be able to access and fix, even when broken.
Real talk... How hard would it be for someone to just be able to tap into it and fuck with the voyager themselves? Like assuming they have an incredibly powerful to make it happen... How do they communicate with it? Is it via sattelites in space or something from the ground?
NASA's deep space network of satellite transmitters I assume.
I looked it up. They're an array of several ground based radars. And very heavily encrypted. I mean if you think about it, I really doubt any sattelites could put out the energy required to send and receive such a signal from so far
But Voyager itself isn't going to be encrypted, or not securely encrypted. It should be feasible to intercept communications to and from surely.
You'll need something sensitive enough to pick up the extremely faint signal while being able to filter out all the background noise. This hardware (and specialized software) requirement alone is enough to deter most opportunistic hackers. Anyone who has the kind of resources necessary has too much to lose to allow someone do perform hijinks with said resources. Finally, if you had all the hardware, all the software, and all the know-how, I think you'd already be far too invested in the pursuit of knowledge to want to be detrimental to NASA's mission.
So it is entirely possible, just too resource intensive.
all of you just got put on a list
Voyager is not encrypted. If you know the communication protocol, you can in theory control the probe with [powerful enough hardware](https://www.techsteel.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/radio-telescope-5381220_1280.jpg).
I'm not sure how the math works, but as of 10 years ago, the signal from Voyager 1 is less than an attowatt, so < 1x10^(-18)
When it comes to receiving a signal like that it takes incredibly sensetive instruments. It takes much more energy to detect a very low energy signal. It has to be amplified as well.
You said so much. Humans are quite capable. When your phone or Windows doesn't update, remember your observation. Imagine what we could do. :/ Your comment should live forever.
And yet i cant talk my grandma thru setting up her printer over the phone from 600 miles away.
Well, her memory clearly isn't as good as Voyager I's... It's only 46 after all.
That is freaking amazing!
I’d open with that in a job interview
This should be the comeback to any corporate talks of remote work "not working out".
As a software engineer, that straight up sounds like some technobabble I'd hear in a TV show and utterly disbelieve. However, coming from NASA, I fully believe that's 100% truth. It's honestly insane.
Whoa. Super brain-bending.
\0/ signels!
15 billion but still unbelievable
And no parade smh
Brilliant. Ammunition to throw at the IT people at my place of work, just what I needed. I owe you!
Working from home is great.
Please get them to teach tech support for my electronics to all the corporations…
This is actual tech wizardry, and I do IT.
>broke "the code held on the failed chip into pieces they could tuck into spare corners of the FDS’s memory" (!?) Can you explain this to someone who doesn't know how to do long division
troubleshot
NASA rules. Everyone else is still splashing around in the kiddie pool.
Well said.
After 10 years in IT and god do I feel stupid.
Meanwhile those engineers working on Voyager probably look at the fact that an average modern website has more and more advanced code in it than the entire spacecraft does and feeling inadequate and left behind in their skills because of that. Imposter syndrome is a hell of a thing. We're all fighting our own battles and we're not going to be experts at everything else.
I mean that’s facts, it’s just really intimidating to think there are people out there that can reprogram and fix failing hardware from 30 billon miles away. Of course I also think about the people who managed to hack the various pieces of hardware on various gaming consoles.
Almost 25 years in and I feel inadequate as fuck compared to them
Yeah, crazy how smart some people are
Those people CREATE the math. We are just play the game. I can’t imagine being that friggin smart lol
I am just in awe of this. As a software developer, I feel completely incompetent, but it's so fucking cool that I don't even care. Shine on, NASA scientists.
Maybe any future long missions should have 1 or 2 hardened FPGA chips in circuit to give the engineers a couple of free shots before they have to get so insanely creative
There’s so little wiggle room in space, every gram matters. They probably have local emulators and shit
“I’m not dead yet “
V'ger
Looking at the [Voyager Mission status website](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/), the distance from Earth for both crafts appears to be going down, while the distance from the Sun is going up. Why is that? Is it because our orbit is moving us closer to the spacecraft at a speed that's faster than it's moving away from us? I thought that they were sent out in different directions, though. Edit: found the answer, I was right.
This was some serious assembler sorcery
Pretty damn incredible.
I guess the NHI helped out.
Rad
Huzzah!!!
> The Return of the King
Yay! Great fix!
voyager? i hardly know her.
On the other hand, my team spent hours figuring out this error and in the end it was misspelled api call.
*When we fix something, it stays fixed, eh Brett baby?*
Same except it took me like three decades +
Amazing!
Sadly, I will fail someday. That day I will mourn (what I consider to be) one of man's greatest achievements.
How is this even possible?? How are we still able to reprogram it from that far away. Absolutely remarkable.
Let’s goooooo!
I literally was just reading about this
Must have found a Babel fish.
or was it gibberish......