47-year-old Voyager 1 fired up thrusters it hasn't used in decades

A radio signal takes more than 22 hours to reach Voyager 1. And it would take the same to get a response back. Incredible. And imagine the patience needed to send commands and wait for the outcome on the part of the engineering team. You can't afford to send a wrong command and have the luxury of undo. Also, I wonder how many generations of engineers must have worked on the project by now.

Re: 47-year-old Voyager 1 fired up thrusters it hasn't used in decades

#7

Post by stevage » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 6:13 AM UTC

Multiple puffs of hydrazine every day to keep the craft stable, for more than 50 years? How big are these tanks?

Re: 47-year-old Voyager 1 fired up thrusters it hasn't used in decades

#8

Post by b112 » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 6:14 AM UTC

yashg wrote: post #6

A radio signal takes more than 22 hours to reach Voyager 1. And it would take the same to get a response back. Incredible. And imagine the patience needed to send commands and wait for the outcome on the part of the engineering team. You can't afford to send a wrong command and have the luxury of undo. Also, I wonder how many generations of engineers must have worked on the project by now.

You can't afford to send a wrong command and have the luxury of undo.

Indeed. We used to do this all the time. Cars without OTA updates, games and software shipped on disk or floppy or cd, all very make or break.

Re: 47-year-old Voyager 1 fired up thrusters it hasn't used in decades

#9

Post by DaoVeles » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 6:27 AM UTC

b112 wrote: post #8

yashg wrote: post #6

A radio signal takes more than 22 hours to reach Voyager 1. And it would take the same to get a response back. Incredible. And imagine the patience needed to send commands and wait for the outcome on the part of the engineering team. You can't afford to send a wrong command and have the luxury of undo. Also, I wonder how many generations of engineers must have worked on the project by now.

You can't afford to send a wrong command and have the luxury of undo. Indeed. We used to do this all the time. Cars without OTA updates, games and software shipped on disk or floppy or cd, all very make or break.

An aside but this is why I was blown away by Mario Odyssey on the Switch. While it did get patches to add a few new games modes and bonuses, there was nothing done to fix anything broken with the title because there wasn't anything. If you buy a physical copy from the last few years, there is no additional patch to download.

They had all the issues sorted out before release, very rare nowadays.

Re: 47-year-old Voyager 1 fired up thrusters it hasn't used in decades

#10

Post by bigiain » Tue, Sep 17, 2024, 6:51 AM UTC

yashg wrote: post #6

A radio signal takes more than 22 hours to reach Voyager 1. And it would take the same to get a response back. Incredible. And imagine the patience needed to send commands and wait for the outcome on the part of the engineering team. You can't afford to send a wrong command and have the luxury of undo. Also, I wonder how many generations of engineers must have worked on the project by now.

I suspect most people who've ever been responsible for colo-ed unix-ish servers have learned to do something like:

> ufw reset | at now +5 minutes

When doing "dangerous" things like updating firewall rules.

I wonder if they have a way to send commands saying something like:

Switch to thruster set 1, wriggle the antenna aim away and back to earth, wait 46 hours, if you do not receive "all clear" from earth switch back to thruster set 3 and re aim the antenna at earth.