NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
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Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#2[deleted]
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#3It's mind boggling to think the first of these launched when I was ~5 years old - and still operational, at these distances.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#4Love the Voyagers story.
Just get me thinking: Why there is not more missions like this ? It takes significant time to cross "somewhere there", every year one launch could not hurt ?
Edit:
*Obligatory video: "Uptime 15,364 days - The Computers of Voyager" by Aaron Cummings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o
Also here on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=voyager
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#5I don’t understand why we are not sending these off in every direction constantly. The price can’t possibly be that prohibitive considering what we can accomplish with 40 year old technology.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#6I don’t understand why we are not sending these off in every direction constantly. The price can’t possibly be that prohibitive considering what we can accomplish with 40 year old technology.
The Voyagers took advantage of a particularly good planetary alignment for gravity boosts.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#7I don’t understand why we are not sending these off in every direction constantly. The price can’t possibly be that prohibitive considering what we can accomplish with 40 year old technology.
The equivalent of about 4 billion dollars in modern day money for both of them. That, plus waiting for some very opportune launch times so that we can gravity boost off of everything.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#8I hope they will publish firmware/source code at some point in the future. It would be definitely interesting to look into.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#9I hope they will publish firmware/source code at some point in the future. It would be definitely interesting to look into.
I could be able to find out the code is a mix between assembly and fotran.
I wonder how percentage of it is for sensor, navigation, communication
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#10I hope they will publish firmware/source code at some point in the future. It would be definitely interesting to look into.
I suspect they can’t. It is quite possible security was not on anyone’s mind back then and the last thing they want are rouge signals from some amateur fucking up generations worth of work.