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> During a routine, planned roll maneuver on Feb. 27 It's amazing not only are the electrical components still operational, but some mechanical ones as well.
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It was launched faster but the final speed is slower - it'll never catch up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons#Speed
Hmm, I definitely remembered it being referred to as the fastest human made thing. Just missed the salient "launched" detail
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yeah the sparse data being returned from Voyager are the only direct observations ever made of the outer solar system / beyond. Even if the data is humdrum and exactly as expected, that in itself is worth something.
But worth enough to send a new probe? Generally we don’t construct and maintain expensive scientific equipment just for the fun of it. There usually is some question or debate we expect them to answer or settle.
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Are you planning on dying before 2036? That's one estimate for when they'll run out of power.
With little what I know of Voyager, the beautiful machine has broke all previous estimates. And thus hoping it will last until we have another such machine overtake the distance before this one goes into total shutdown
Imagine deploying your bug fix and having to wait two days to find out if it worked!
I would love to better understand how a device launched the year before I was born could be so flexible in its configuration and operation. I can't update the code running on a microcontroller on my desk in front of me without it triggering a reboot. When they talk about rerouting power and performing a "big bang" reconfiguration with a 23 hour lag on equipment that was underpowered when the 8088 came out... it kind…
NASA pioneered a lot of what underpins modern design of critical computer systems. Voyager's systems are impressively robust. As far as I know, they can patch it by directly sending up new assembly instructions that are written into its memory, and doing a warm reboot to get it to start executing new instructions without powering down anything. They had the foresight to make their software highly editable, while also…
It continues to irritate me that There aren't any other functioning deep space probes besides New Horizons (launched in 2006, and which flies at a slower speed than Voyagers). One new operating deep space probe in nearly 50 years is just embarrassing. I mean yay space telescopes and everything, but we seem to have given up anything that isn't a state-of-the-art prestige project. I was hopeful about projects like Brea…
Isn't a big part of the problem that the voyager slingshot is one of the best you can get, and it's a once in multiple-lifetimes event? Even if we launch a new deep space probe as best we can they're gonna be real slow?
It continues to irritate me that There aren't any other functioning deep space probes besides New Horizons (launched in 2006, and which flies at a slower speed than Voyagers). One new operating deep space probe in nearly 50 years is just embarrassing. I mean yay space telescopes and everything, but we seem to have given up anything that isn't a state-of-the-art prestige project. I was hopeful about projects like Brea…
What else are you looking to see from such deep space? Nothing we launch will ever reach anything anything interesting in probably the life of humanity. Just to get to Pluto in our life times meant going so fast that it could only fly by. Maybe flying around in the Oort cloud might, unlikely though, be interesting.
> They are still working great, sending back data from a region of space no other human-made craft has ever explored Unlike the non human-made craft in the region?
Ideally, just how much longer can the crafts keep going even with the "Big Bang" fix, given the old hardware that they carry?