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NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

blogs.nasa.gov

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Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#121

Post by nojvek »

treesknees wrote: post #90
dx4100 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average vape has more processing power than Voyager, and the iPhone is orders of magnitude more complex. With that said, it takes skilled engineers to squeeze perfectly crafted code into such a tiny platform from the 70s.

I understand what you're getting at, but the 'average' vape pen is essentially a disposable battery and temperature sensor with no additional inputs or features. After reading some details about the Voyager, I have my doubts that a disposable vape has more computation power [1]. Maybe the higher end devices with programable displays and temperature settings? [1] https://www.eejournal.com/article/voyagers-1-and-2-take…

New vapes have Bluetooth on a small chip that tracks # of puffs remaining. Being sold for $40 bucks a at store.

Crazy that we have disposable one use electronics now.

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#122

Post by echelon »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #59

There's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far. I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where humans have colonized by comparison.

> when we're a true interstellar species

If we can harness all of the energy and mass available in our solar system, we [1] can likely compute more than several galaxies full of classical humans. We might even begin to test the edges of physics.

Maybe we don't need to go anywhere at all. Maybe we [1] have all we need right here to become literal gods.

[1] Our digital descendants. Humans are very much fit to the gas exchange and metabolism envelope of our gravity well.

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#123

Post by z500 »

jlaneve wrote: post #101

> The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. Talk about a slow feedback loop! And I get frustrated when I need t…

My internet is operating at about 1/100 normal speed today. It feels a bit like I've been remoting into a machine on Mars.

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#124

Post by whatrocks »

Sucker for any news about the voyage of the Golden Record (almost but not quite a CS Lewis title)! For fun, I wrote a short story two years ago about a top-secret "Voyager 3" mission (and the probe's unexpected return to Earth): https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#125

Post by dgfitz »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #115
jlaneve wrote: post #101

> The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. Talk about a slow feedback loop! And I get frustrated when I need t…

How much data can you send in a single radio single? I assume it's not TCP/IP

Have you investigated this or are you just asking? I imagine if you wish to learn the answer it is a few simple searches away. And by “imagine” I mean, it is.

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#126

Post by hnlmorg »

ioblomov wrote: post #110
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there a Star Trek enemy that was based on Voyager colliding with some kind of doomsday machine?

[SPOILER ALERT] It was the surprise ending for the first Star Trek film... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Pictur...

That was Voyager 6, a fictional probe based on the real life probes of the same name.

Earth probe gone bad is a common trope in Sci-Fi. Star Trek alone has a few episodes:

- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Nomad

- https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Friendship_1

Also the Doomsday machine was a very different type of probe to V’ger

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Doomsday_Machine_(e...

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#127

Post by batch12 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #98
Night_Thastus wrote: post #59

There's something very beautiful about Voyager's journey so far. I hope one day when we're a true interstellar species we'll still keep tabs on it. The data may not be useful anymore, but it would be cool to imagine a year 3000 society with a little "Look at where Voyager is now :)" tool that you can see its path and where humans have colonized by comparison.

Wasn't there a Star Trek enemy that was based on Voyager colliding with some kind of doomsday machine?

I think the Klingons destroyed pioneer 10 too.

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#128

Post by floxy »

project2501a wrote: post #81

sorry, i just have a silly question: what would it take to send new probes out there? voyager 3 and 4 for example to follow the same path (more or less, sans planet alignment) V1 and V2 followed, but with better hardware of course.

If you just want to fling something out there fast, I think this is a pretty cool way to do it:

https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI?si=28yrQW8B2IfbGvqj&t=883

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#129

Post by layer8 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #126
ioblomov wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[SPOILER ALERT] It was the surprise ending for the first Star Trek film... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Pictur...

That was Voyager 6, a fictional probe based on the real life probes of the same name. Earth probe gone bad is a common trope in Sci-Fi. Star Trek alone has a few episodes: - https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Nomad - https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Friendship_1 Also the Doomsday machine was a very different type of probe to V’ger https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Doomsday_Machine_(e...

Strangely, this isn’t listed as a trope here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/StarTrekTheMotio...

Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

#130

Post by vikingerik »

project2501a wrote: post #81

sorry, i just have a silly question: what would it take to send new probes out there? voyager 3 and 4 for example to follow the same path (more or less, sans planet alignment) V1 and V2 followed, but with better hardware of course.

There's basically no point scientifically for doing the four-planet flyby again. Since Voyager, we've already done much better at Jupiter and Saturn with years-long orbiter missions. A quick flyby wouldn't get us anything we don't already know at those. Voyager gets the mindshare because it was first and the four-way slingshot is fun to visualize, but the reality is that Galileo and Cassini and Juno delivered thousands of times more data.

We could use more investigation at Uranus and Neptune, but we'd get much more out of extended orbiter missions to those rather than another quick flyby. A Uranus orbiter is currently one of the higher priority missions in planning, and there's a launch window for a Jupiter-Uranus slingshot in 2034 or 2035.

(What I wonder is, how much planning do these things need? Why can't we just launch another copy of Cassini to Uranus and skip all the expensive design? You'd need some changes to antennas and power supply for a more distant planet, but the scientific instruments and computing platform should just be reusable designs.)

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