Earlier quoted context omitted.
With npm, 64GB ought to be enough for everyone.
A rust rewrite from scratch is already in process
A Go rewrite from scratch soon to follow.
NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
121–130 of 326 posts
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#122Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#123I 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.
Because the inverse square law applies to probes too. We can send them out by the millions, but by the time they get far enough out to see something interesting the probe density will be practically zero.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#124Love 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
The Interstellar Probe is something the Johns Hopkins APL has been proposing. I don't think its been funded yet. https://interstellarprobe.jhuapl.edu/Interstellar-Probe-Exec...
The difficulty of long range communications is nicely demonstrated there: "X-band with 5-m fixed antenna capable of sufficient downlink (~10 Mbit/week) at 1000 au using Next Generation Very Large Array or equivalent resource" ... "Two Next Generation Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators for 300 W
(electric) at end of mission"
So with twice the area of radio dish and a power supply that after 50 years is still double what Voyager launched with, the data rate will be two bytes per second.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those gravitational boosts are vital. The closest in speed so far would be 'New Horizons'. But even then NH is going at 14.5KM/sec compared with Voyagers 18KM/sec. There are no probes currently that would catch up to Voyager.
18km/s is almost understated in terms of speed, so I looked it up to more familiar measures of speed: 65,000kph or 40,000mph. The only thing I really learned here was how even in the thousands of miles or km per hour, it’s just inconceivable how fast that is. Km per second was a better measure after all.
What is crazy to me is that even at those speeds, it is over 18,000 years from reaching one light year distance. The closest star is 4.2 light years away. So to ever reach it we would need multi generational ships or some way to go much much faster.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#126Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I highly doubt an amateur has the means to contact the probes. Heck, I'm not even sure any organization besides NASA has antennas big enough for the job.
The Russians, or the Chinese.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#128That's cool. My Redmi phone makers won't even send it a few miles across this same planet!
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just an issue of money. Apple made a lot more money last year than NASA did.
And Apple would have made a lot more money if you spent the equivalent of Voyager 2's cost on your iPhone. It is just about money. Cheap out and buy a budget phone and you will also get budget support.
I think it's better to say - if your phone was 12 billion miles from Earth and used to send sensitive scientific data - it would get updates as well.
Re: NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft 12B miles away
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Interstellar Probe is something the Johns Hopkins APL has been proposing. I don't think its been funded yet. https://interstellarprobe.jhuapl.edu/Interstellar-Probe-Exec...
The difficulty of long range communications is nicely demonstrated there: "X-band with 5-m fixed antenna capable of sufficient downlink (~10 Mbit/week) at 1000 au using Next Generation Very Large Array or equivalent resource" ... "Two Next Generation Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators for 300 W (electric) at end of mission" So with twice the area of radio dish and a power supply that after 50 years is still doubl…
That's still a lot faster than FT8 or WSPR & both are perfectly usable for things like 16g solar powered balooon probes with a RPi Pico and a GPS, flying around the globe. :)
https://www.zachtek.com/post/a-new-wspr-transmitter-for-ball...
Should be similar out there & also likely not much stuff to take photos of.