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NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
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Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#192Voyager has been an inspiration for generations of engineers. Bless you all that worked on it. Thank you. Recently I designed in a Voyager inspired secret Easter egg into the surgical robot I designed. I put a gold (plated) plate with everyone's signature engraved on it. Gave everyone one as a surprise Christmas gift.
Cool! What else can you tell us about this robot you built?
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we know how long the power source will last?
The plutonium 238 decays according to a curve, and the thermocouples are degraded as well by heat and radiation according to a curve. So the power output drops rather predictably: "The radioisotope thermoelectric generator on each spacecraft puts out 4 watts less each year." [1] The Voyagers will soon no longer have enough power to operate any of their instruments. They'll have enough power to continue operating the…
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[1] https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/
Also:
Even if science data won't likely be collected after 2025, engineering data could continue to be returned for several more years. The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back to Earth.
That FAQ covers a lot of interesting ground (though it talks about 2020 in the future tense).
After Voyager 1 took its last image (the "Solar System Family Portrait" in 1990), the cameras were turned off to save power and memory ...
I didn't realize that was the last image.
... it is very dark where the Voyagers are now. While you could still see some brighter stars and some of the planets with the cameras, you can actually see these stars and planets better with amateur telescopes on Earth.
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#194"The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory." Just another proof that we may have gained a lot, but also lost something in our pu…
I want no remote hacker to do this kind of hack on my devices.
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#195Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#196Pretty incredible feat of engineering (both back when it was launched and now). Does anyone know its current purpose? I’m curious if there’s anything we’re actively using it for or if it’s just a matter of “look for surprises”.
The magnetometers and charged particle detectors are still operating. So they are measuring the galactic magnetic field, and cosmic rays and the gas in interstellar space. The results are more or less what was predicted, though the exact boundary of the sun's influence was only discovered when Voyager 1 and 2 crossed over it in 2012 and 2018 respectively. Beyond that, yes, they're basically assuring us the sun is still there and that space is very empty. I don't think anyone expects the interstellar gas to vary in density on the timeframe that the Voyagers will be able to observe it but, I guess we'll find out!
Edit: I spoke way too soon. It varies, as discovered with Voyager measurements recently: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/as-nasas-voyager-1-surveys-int...
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#197There'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 e…
> compute more than several galaxies full of classical humans
Unfortunately the simulated classical humans in your Matrioshka Brain will want to mine Bitcoin, which means that our digital descendants will have to become a true interstellar species anyway in order to convert the Laniakea Supercluster into coin-mining computronium.
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#198Voyager has been an inspiration for generations of engineers. Bless you all that worked on it. Thank you. Recently I designed in a Voyager inspired secret Easter egg into the surgical robot I designed. I put a gold (plated) plate with everyone's signature engraved on it. Gave everyone one as a surprise Christmas gift.
Cool! What else can you tell us about this robot you built?
It's the Maestro from Moon Surgical, it's done over 200 surgeries, all successful. So far (no whammy) its had 100% reliability with the first 6 systems we built. We designed it (hardware wise) with only 3 engineers, including me, and we hand built the first ones right here in San Carlos, CA. The company is based in Paris and has a whole interesting history there as well.
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#199There'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.
Perhaps our descendants will build a museum around it without ever changing its velocity.
I’ve never thought about it this way. What a cool idea!
Re: NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
#200Yep, 45 years old hardware, still getting software updates. Hey Apple, JPL is close to you, can you get someone to bike over and see how they do it? Thanks!
JPL is in Altadena and Apple is in the sf Bay Area