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Space Science

Pioneer 10 Still Running After 30 years 318

Posted by michael from the overdue-for-tuneup-and-brake-job dept.
evilempireinc writes "According to this article in Scientific American, Pioneer 10 is still functioning 30 years after it was launched in 1972, and is still sending back scientific data. The article mentions that two other old space craft, Voyager, and IMP-8 are still functioning after over 20 years as well due to overbuilt construction and redundant systems. Can't help but wonder if the present generation of "faster, better, cheaper" probes will ever live this long though."
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Pioneer 10 Still Running After 30 years More

Pioneer 10 Still Running After 30 years

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  • VGER (Score:5, Funny)

    by perreira ( 176114 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:47AM (#3936421) Homepage
    As we all know, Voyager will still work in 200 years, when Kirk has to rescue Earth from it returning... ;)

    • Re:VGER (Score:3, Informative)

      by Buran ( 150348 )
      Actually, that was Voyager VI. Except we were told of only two: Voyager I and Voyager II (actually launched first, if I recall correctly, due to a faster trajectory.) Hmmm... Wonder if the Men in Black were involved in that cover-up. ;)
    • ...some fifteen years later, it'll be used as intragalatic skeet shoot by a trigger-happy Klingon captain.

  • they don't make them like they used to (Score:4, Funny)

    by SystematicPsycho ( 456042 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:49AM (#3936433)
    just wanted to say it, probably doesn't apply here though

  • The secret of its success .. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Derwen ( 219179 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:50AM (#3936435) Homepage

    is self delusion

    Pioneer 10 is still functioning 30 years after it was launched in 1972,
    Due to Y2K issues it thinks it's still 1972, so it's way too young to burn out and die ;-)

  • Milk Cartons? (Score:5, Informative)

    by mister7 ( 56875 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:53AM (#3936447)
    Anyone who went to elementary school in the 70's ought to remember the cafeteria milk cartons with little factoids about Pioneer, Voyager, and a bunch of other spacecraft. I wonder if anyone has pictures of those old things?

    • Re:Milk Cartons? (Score:5, Funny)

      by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @10:07AM (#3937273) Homepage
      And underneath the picture, the words:
      "Missing. Have you seen this spacecraft?"
    • (* Anyone who went to elementary school in the 70's ought to remember the cafeteria milk cartons with little factoids about Pioneer, Voyager, and a bunch of other spacecraft. I wonder if anyone has pictures of those old things? *)

      Now they just have missing children on them.

      Hey! I wonder if in Martian cafeterias they have milk cartons that say, "Have you seen this probe?" next to a picture of the missing Mars Polar Lander.
  • I can't help but notice that some of these older space probes may have cost more in 1970's dollar's when adjusted for inflation, but if they last for 30 years there was the potential to get more for you money over the years. It certainly seem more care went into the planning than some recent missions [nasa.gov].
    • Aren't the newer missions more specifically focused than the old missions? Ie, they have a small, highly defined endpoint they have to get to and the designs are built to do that one mission.

      Seems that the older missions ("Fly that way until your battery runs out") were purposefully vague and required a spacecraft with a higher amount of durability due to the squishiness of the mission.

    • Re:Newer, cheaper, unreliable? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jovlinger ( 55075 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @09:54AM (#3937167) Homepage
      No!

      you don't want the probes to survive longer than planned. You want them to be like F1 race cars: ideally, the engine should explode _just_ over the finish line. Only then have you maximized tolerances. However, due to uncertainty, you engineer in a margin of safety.

      A 30 year margin doesn't indicate good design, it indicates a MASSIVE misjudgemnt of the tolerances involved. Fine. these were the first probes built, so noone knew the margins needed.

      It's misguided to continue insisting on such ludicrous margins. If you want a long-living probe, then that becomes a design consideration, but this _moves the finish line_, rather than increasing the margins necessary.

      The long life of the probes is indicative of good engineers making conservative choices in the face of uncertainty rather than good design.

      aside:

      the only reason why fast-cheap-cheerful isn't a handsdown winner is that each probe's cost is augmented by the cost of launch, which makes even a free probe an expensive mission. Thus, there is economic gain from a bit of overengineering, as the cost of the hardware isn't really a large part of the total cost, so any bonus functionality you get is worth the price, to a limit.

      The real loss if the ISS is shut down will be that they could have built a rail-gun to fire largely unpowered probes on long-term missions for basically free.
      • "The real loss if the ISS is shut down will be that they could have built a rail-gun to fire largely unpowered probes on long-term missions for basically free."

        Well, except they need to get materials there somehow.

  • How special is that.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by XaXXon ( 202882 ) <xaxxon AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:54AM (#3936454) Homepage
    I mean.. of how much use is a 30 year old probe? I think I'd probably want to send out cheaper probes more frequently than still be getting data from an old one. I know it takes a while to get stuff out that far and all, but doesn't newer mean better?

    • Re:How special is that.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by ReidMaynard ( 161608 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:56AM (#3936469) Homepage
      I mean.. of how much use is a 30 year old probe?

      My probe is 44 years old and works just fine, thank you.

    • Well since it took us thirty years to get out there and I don't we could get there much faster today. Plus the cost of making a probe with enough power to last the journey. I'd say we've gotten not only our money's worth but that these are damn useful probes. If nothing else they can give us an idea of what to look for with our next probes. This is assuming that we can get the money for the next generation of deep space probes which I highly doubt.

      To bad that Pioneer 10's ultimate demise will come at the hands of the Klingons.
    • The Pioneers and Voyagers are the only man-made objects to have left our solar system. Even though the spacecraft are sending little more information than "I'm not dead yet," physicists can use those signals to determine where the influence of the solar wind (the heliopause) ends, and whether or not gravity behaves as expected at large distances. (See, for example, this [observers.org] article.)

  • To old to rock n roll... to young to die? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Maeryk ( 87865 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:54AM (#3936457) Journal
    Okay.. I read the article. It was an interesting mix between pat on the back science and good old "Hey, aint NASA GREAT!" enthusiasm.

    My question.. which I did not see answered, are where ARE they right now? I know they havent cleared the SS yet, but where exactly are they? ARe we going to get pictures Pluto and Neptune back? (Which would be GREAT.. and would solve that long running question of whether Pluto is even a planet, a bit asteroid, or a half a planet that got pulled into the gravity well here).

    Does it even have the transmitting power to send real data back anymore? or simply to weakly croak "I am here".

    Maeryk
    • The Voyager probes and Pioneer 10 are all well outside the orbit of pluto and Neptune was observed in like 1988 by Voyager 2. As for analyzing Pluto. There is currently a mission being planned, but it is in danger of being cut for financial reasons. This article [cnn.com] covers a little bit about the Pluto probe.

    • Re:To old to rock n roll... to young to die? (Score:5, Informative)

      by linderdm ( 127168 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:26AM (#3936612)
      This graphic [telegraph.co.uk] from The Telegraph article shows where Pioneer 10 is (outside of our Solar System). It also shows pictures it took of Jupiter (1973), Saturn (1979) and Pluto (1983). It has been almost 20 years since it left our Solar System. Apparently it is heading towards the "Eye" of the Taurus Bull constellation, and will take 2 million years to reach it. however it is slowing down by some "mysterious" force.

    • Re:To old to rock n roll... to young to die? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:37AM (#3936655) Homepage
      Actually, Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 have both cleared the solar system... well, depending on what you define as the solar system.

      Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Neptune and passed beyond the (at the time) furthest orbiting planet on June 13, 1983 (see this page [nasa.gov]). It hasn't passed the heliopause yet (distance where the solar wind ceases), at least not that anyone can determine.

      Pioneer 10 is not the probe furthest from the sun, however. Apparantly that honor goes to Voyager 1, which is moving faster and exceeded Pioneer 10's heliocentric distance on Feb 17, 1998, but it's still well over 7 billion miles away. (see http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/p ioneer/PNhome.html [nasa.gov]).

      One interesting thing I found while looking for this is that only Pioneer 10 is moving in the opposite direction from our solar system (relative to the galactic core). Voyager 1 & 2, as well as Pioneer 11 are moving "in front of" us, while Pioneer 10 is moving the opposite direction. This could result in some really useful information about the edges of the solar system -- except that apparantly Pioneer 10's power system is going to run out of juice in a few years (solar powered I guess - the W/m^2 will probably be too low to power the probe at that point).

      And no, we're not getting pictures of Neptune or Pluto. You determine these things at time of launch -- we've been doing astronomical calculations for a few hundred years and know where the planets are going to be far ahead of time. Pioneer 10 wasn't scheduled to make a flyby of anything but Jupiter because the orbits were wrong.

      And yes, it is still sending back data. As is Pioneer 6, which is still orbiting the sun at about 74 million miles (inside the Earth's orbit). But, like I said, apparantly that's not going to be much longer for Pioneer 10. Shame... but one heck of a legacy to its designers. And just think - in a couple million years we'll be able to pick it up in the vicinity of Aldebaran.

      • Re:To old to rock n roll... to young to die? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Buran ( 150348 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @09:01AM (#3936824)
        (solar powered I guess - the W/m^2 will probably be too low to power the probe at that point).

        Nope. Actually, solar panels are not a practical means of powering a spacecraft beyond the asteroid belt, and these probes go far, far beyond that.

        Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, Ulysses, Galileo, and Cassini (to name many of the "big" and famous probes that are out there right now) are all nuclear powered. They carry radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that carry plutonium as a fuel source. Surprisingly (?), the Viking I and II landers that touched down on Mars in 1976 are also nuclear-powered.

        The probes are gradually dying because their plutonium fuel is running out, not because the sun is fading away. At the distances at which many of these probes travel, the Sun appears (from their location) simply as a bright start among many other stars.
        • The ALSEPs (Apollo Lunar Scientific Experiment Packages) deployed on the Moon by the Apollo 12 and 14-17 missions were also RTG powered.

          They might be operating yet if they hadn't all been remotely switched off (including the receivers, so no way to turn them back on) by NASA back in 1977 because they didn't want to fund the ground support team any longer.

          (Sigh. At least the passive laser reflectors -- used for precise range measurements from Earth -- still work.)
          • The ALSEPs (Apollo Lunar Scientific Experiment Packages) deployed on the Moon by the Apollo 12 and 14-17 missions were also RTG [nuclear] powered.....been remotely switched off....by NASA back in 1977 because they didn't want to fund...no way to turn them back on...

            The acronym is mighty close to ASLEEP, how fitting.
      • This could result in some really useful information about the edges of the solar system -- except that apparantly Pioneer 10's power system is going to run out of juice in a few years (solar powered I guess - the W/m^2 will probably be too low to power the probe at that point).

        The Pioneer 10 & 11 probes are not solar powered. They use RTG (radiothermal generation) power sources, which are hot lumps of radioactive material and the heat is converted into electricity. Solar power would be far too weak even at Jupiter or Saturn, much less at the distances that Pioneer 10 & 11 are at.

        The radioactive source is continually decaying, so it will lose power over time.
        • My post needs to be slightly corrected: the cause of the power loss is mostly due to aging of the thermal couple, not the decay of the radioactivity.

          More information from Pioneer home page [nasa.gov]:

          Electrical power is provided by four radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG), each providing 40 watts of power at launch. Two three-rod trusses, 120 degrees apart, project from the equipment compartment to deploy the RTG power sources about 10 feet from the center of the spacecraft. A third boom, 120 degrees from the others, projects from the experiments compartment and positions the helium vector magnetometer sensor 20 feet from the spacecraft center.

          and from the FAQ [nasa.gov]

          Question:Why does the RTG power decrease?
          Answer: Power for the Pioneer 10 is generated by the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG's). Heat from the decay of the plutonium 238 isotope is converted by thermoelectric couples into electrical current. The electrical output depends on the hot junction temperature, the thermal path to the radiator fins, and the cold junction temperature. It is the degradation of the thermoelectric junction that has the major effect in decreasing the power output of the RTG. In the 30-year time scale operation of Pioneer 10, the 92 year half-life of the isotope does not appreciably affect the RTG operation. The nuclear decay heat will keep the hot junction temperature hot for many years but unfortunately will not be able to be converted into enough electricity to power the transmitter for much longer.

          As an aside, this type of power source is behind the plutonium scare-mongering that surrounded Cassini.

      • apparantly Pioneer 10's power system is going to run out of juice in a few years (solar powered I guess - the W/m^2 will probably be too low to power the probe at that point).

        Pioneer 10 is powered by a device called an "RTG", which stands for "radioisotopic thermoelectric generator." A chunk of Plutonium-238 heats up one side of a thermocouple, generating electricity. Since the Pu-238 has a half-life of 88 years, the power supplied by the RTG decreases over decades. At this point, there is barely enough power to run one or two particle detectors or send back a message to Earth.

        For a detailed history of RTGs, check out this Miamisburg Environmental Management Project report. [doe-md.gov]

        Current solar panels are pretty much useless beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

    • The long running question of whether Pluto is a planet or not was solved a few years ago. Pluto is just a big asteroid from the Kuiper-belt or the Oort cloud [arizona.edu]. As for its status, it is still a planet for tradition's sake. At least this was the decision of astronomers at their annual meeting in 1999.
    • > Okay.. I read the article. It was an interesting mix between pat on the back science
      > and good old "Hey, aint NASA GREAT!" enthusiasm.

      Well, at least that's a good counter to the constant "scientific research doesn't help people, so it's better to spend twenty times on the military than on space research" FUD that seethes through popular media.

      > My question.. which I did not see answered, are where ARE they right now? I know they havent
      > cleared the SS yet, but where exactly are they? ARe we going to get pictures Pluto and Neptune
      > back?

      http://www.vttoth.com/probes/probes.html

      That's an okay list of current space probe locations, though it's not in any kind of detail.

      None of the deep space probes are anywhere even remotely near Pluto or Neptune.

      http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/flteam/weekly-rpts/c ur rent.html
      http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space _Projects/p ioneer/PNStat.html
      http://www.schools.ash.org.au/ rochedale/solar9.htm

      The above URLs should show you that both Voyagers as well as Pioneer 10 are at least ten billion kilometers away from the Sun, and they are leaving the solar system at greater than minimal escape velocity. Pluto, when furthest from Sol, is 7.4 billion kilometers away. So the probes are anywhere between 2.6 and 17.4 billion (or more) billion kilometers away from Pluto. Which means that we won't learn much from them about our little wanna-be planet.

      > (Which would be GREAT.. and would solve that long running question of whether Pluto is even a
      > planet, a bit asteroid, or a half a planet that got pulled into the gravity well here).

      The long-running question is not science based, really. We already know the mass and diameter of Pluto. Heck, we even have a
      (http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/96/09.html) surface map of Pluto, thanks to Hubble (the satellite, not the man). The debate over whether Pluto is a planet is dependent on two things: (1) we don't really have a specific definition of the word "Planet", and (2) the common masses would get pissed off if Pluto got demoted, even if it was a rightful demotion, since they were taught as children that Pluto is a planet

      > Does it even have the transmitting power to send real data back anymore?
      > or simply to weakly croak "I am here".

      Well, Pioneer still performs maneuvering commands when requested. I don't know if its scientific resources are useable, but the Voyagers have nominal science instrument performance. I do recall that they are using these probes to determine where the point between solar wind and its stellar equivalent become equivalent in strength. I can't tell you much more, as I'm a bit busy at work today. :)

      -JC
      http://www.jc-news.com/
    • This [nasa.gov] is probably the best up-to-date source for exactly where they are, given that it predicts future location. The actual mission status stats seem to get updated only occassionally, and I think what's up there is about three months old.

      Anyway, Voyager 1 appears to be just short of 8 billion miles from the sun rather than "well over 7" as mentioned below.

    • "VOYAGER 1 is currently more than 7.7 billion miles from Earth, and Voyager 2 is at a distance of more than 6 billion miles."

    • ARe we going to get pictures Pluto and Neptune back?

      Um, Voyager 2 passed Neptune in 1989 and took some nice pictures [nasa.gov].

      None of them are headed anywhere near Pluto.

  • Design for Reliability (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nuggz ( 69912 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:54AM (#3936459) Homepage
    Failure is an interesting field of study.
    Lets say after 5 years you want a 99% chance it still works, or 1% chance of failure. If look at it after 10, or 20 years you'd only have a 2% or 3% chance of failure.

    Basically if something is VERY reliable in the short term, it will have a LONG life before you would expect it to wear out.

    Weibull statistics are pretty good for predicting life, you can read up on it. In many industries it is the accepted standard approach to predict life.

  • Big Deal (Score:5, Funny)

    by jvl001 ( 229079 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:55AM (#3936463) Homepage
    I'm still running after I was launched in 1972.

  • Of course they won't (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saint Fnordius ( 456567 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:56AM (#3936470) Homepage Journal
    Most of these cheap probes are meant for suicide missions. It's hard to keep sending back info when you're slamming into a hellish atmosphere, or weathering the sandstorms of Mars.

    It's like comparing dispisable watches to a Rolex.

  • Quality Control (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Myco ( 473173 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @07:58AM (#3936477) Homepage
    I read an article a while back on NASA's mission failures from the last few years (Sci Am maybe? I dunno). One interviewee working there affirmed that quality control was a big area for cutbacks, and in the light of the failures that have been happening they're seeking to spend a lot more time and money on quality control.

    Makes sense to me, if they want to reproduce the successes of the past. "Faster, better, cheaper" is a myth -- you can't just spout a slogan and get everything you want. If you want better stuff, you've got to be prepared to spend more time or money on it, period. It's like the old programmer's motto: "Fast, cheap, good. Pick two."

    Really, there are a lot of analogies between how NASA works and how software dev houses work, and perhaps the two could learn from each other's successes. Code reviews, as was discussed not so long ago on Slashdot, are by far the most cost-effective use of developers' time because of the enormous amount of bugs they prevent. But it's also a very frequently skimped-on area, due to penny pinching and programmer hubris (nothing wrong with MY code!).

    • What NASA's been able to do over the last decade or so since starting up on this new philosophy is accomplish a whole lot of useful science on a significantly lower budget than they had in the cold war, race to the moon era. Unfortunately, in this era Big Science is just economically impractical.

      Sure, they've had mission failures, but on average they've gotten a whole lot of stuff done at a relatively low cost. It's more a "faster, cheaper, more" that NASA does nowadays (with the exception of the still-running Shuttle and the ISS).

    • Re:Quality Control (Score:2, Informative)

      by andymac ( 82298 )
      Actually, there are some great NASA websites that deal with SQA and Test:

      I particularly like the *FREE* ARM (Automated Requirements Measurement) tool from the SATC (first link). Granted it only runs on Windoze, but you can get it to parse a 300+ page req doc and count all the requirements, weak phrases, etc. for you. Handy tool.

    • (* if they want to reproduce the successes of the past. "Faster, better, cheaper" is a myth -- you can't just spout a slogan and get everything you want. If you want better stuff, you've got to be prepared to spend more... *)

      The probe failure rate in the faster/better/cheaper (FBC) times was about the same as prior probes. Marineer's 3 and 8 took a dump IIRC. The Viking probes had an instrument or 2 that did not work, and Galellio had a big antenna problem that prevented most images from being sent.

      Exploring space technology is just as important as exploring space. You have to learn by doing. A lot was learned in the FBC era.

      Eventually a balance can be reached, but you have to try before you find out where that balance is and learn new techniques on the way.

      I applaud NASA for trying something bold with cost cutting. They tried to go where no Gov agency has gone before.
  • NASA was thinking about turning off IMP-8 over 20 years ago, it was considered to be an old spacecraft back then. It's amazing that it is still working and providing useful data.

  • Pioneer 10 Still Running After 30 years (Score:3, Funny)

    by Seehund ( 86897 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:02AM (#3936495) Homepage Journal
    Poor Pioneer 10. I don't know what it did 30 years ago, but I'm sure the period for prosecution must have expired by now. Let bygones be bygones and stop chasing the poor thing.
  • ..."Can you hear me now?"
  • "their radioactive power sources should keep them chugging along until at least 2020. And Pioneer 10? It's on course to reach the Taurus constellation in about two million years. "

    Meanwhile, on Planet Zydeca, near the Taurus constellation, around 2019...

    "Captain! Incoming primitive radio active missle from the Human sector, Earth!"

    "Send Bill Gates a snippet of AI code. That should wreck their social and economic systems. Hrm.. and make their Sun a few degrees warmer for shits and giggles"

  • Mysterious force.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mation ( 592649 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:15AM (#3936563) Homepage
    This [telegraph.co.uk] article from The Telegraph [telegraph.co.uk] in February has a bit more detail on the path Pioneer 10 has taken, and also on the 'mysterious force' pulling it back toward Earth...

    What I want to know is, why does the plaque showing humanity in all its naked glory have the man waving hello? How are aliens supposed to interpret this? For all we know that could be the intergalactic symbol for 'come and eat my species, we taste really yummy'...

    Mation

    • What's strangest about this mysterious force is that Jon Katz is writing academic papers about it [aip.org].

      (yes I know it's not the same Jon Katz, at least I think I know it's not the same Jon Katz - the writing style sure looks different). ;)


    • The discovery of that "mysterious force" is the first that I've heard of it--and it's freaking me out a little bit. If there is indeed some kind of force or effect that decelerates objects in what would otherwise be a non-decelerating state, that's going to screw up a LOT of calculations. So much for Newton's First.

      Does anyone else with a better understanding of Einstein's physics have any conjecture what this is? I don't know what they've already corrected for to come up with the "error", but I wonder if this isn't something like the rate of expansion of the Universe, accounting for a relative speed decrease. Any better ideas?
      • Perhaps the interstellar vacuum is less empty than we thought, leading to friction/drag effects?
        • Hm, there's the dark force [sciencenews.org] that accelerates the universe's expansion, and now there's the "mysterious force" that deccelerates a space probe? What's next: the Irresponsible Force, which is what causes events to take place (interstellar eruptions, interplanetary collisions, graduate students' completion of their dissertations) at the last possible moment before they become impossible?
    • What I want to know is, why does the plaque showing humanity in all its naked glory have the man waving hello? How are aliens supposed to interpret this?

      I was always under the impression that this was not a man waving hello, but rather showing humans to have 5 fingers and aposable thumbs. You raise a good point howerver.
    • why does the plaque...
      True. Why doesn't it display pi and e in binary?

  • Today's Pioneer 10 info (Score:3, Informative)

    by msheppard ( 150231 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:20AM (#3936585) Homepage Journal
    [2002-07-23]
    Pioneer 10
    Distance from Sun (AU) 80.858
    Speed relative to Sun (km/s) 12.255
    Speed relative to Sun (AU/year) 2.585
    Ecliptic Latitude 3.0
    Declination (J2000) 25.78
    Right Ascension (J2000) 5.012 hrs
    One-way light time (hours) 11.31

    M@
    • It's "far" outside the solar system, twice as far away from the sun as Pluto, floating around in a void. 11.31 lighthours away from the sun, and 4.3 lightyears (less 11.31 hours) from the next star. Unless there's a flying saucer passing by, don't expect this to ever become more than a radio beacon. Works yes, but useful? No.

      Kjella
    • > Pioneer 10
      > Distance from Sun (AU) 80.858
      > Speed relative to Sun (km/s) 12.255
      > Speed relative to Sun (AU/year) 2.585
      > Ecliptic Latitude 3.0
      > Declination (J2000) 25.78
      > Right Ascension (J2000) 5.012 hrs
      > One-way light time (hours) 11.31

      Boosting NASA's public image: PRICELESS.
  • Older technology works and is very rohbust wheras newer more fancy technology has a shorter lifespan and just breaks when a granny within a 1 mile radius farts.

    As an example, look at mobile devices, older devices can take a huge beating, whereas newer devices just disentigrate on impact.

  • Thoughts on NASA (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Yogs ( 592322 )
    I'm sure it's quite a point of pride for the engineers who worked on those marvelous spacecraft... it would be for me. Bravo. That said, this is a story for two reasons. First and foremost, it is cute... a valient satellite greatly exceeds its creators expectations. Second, it reflects how impressive NASA used to be. Now I don't doubt that there are many very smart people working there nowadays, but if nothing else, I can't imagine there being the enthusiam there once was and that inevitably effects the quality of work. I really do want NASA to continue, provided that it pushes boundries. Keeping a satellite alive and kicking is neat, but it, or more satellites for a different purpose in earth orbit should not be all NASA has to offer.

  • Written by a real programmer (Score:4, Informative)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:25AM (#3936607) Homepage
    That is because the software on Voyager was written by a real programmer [sorehands.com] when 64k was considered a huge amount of memory. Not by these people who think that they are real cool because they only need 64mb of ram and 12 Active X objects print "Hello World."

    . Or that it is real stable because the OS crashes only once a day.

    • That is because the software on Voyager was written by a real programmer...

      Too true. The IMP-8 processor in use on the probe was a real bear to program, too. The main issue was that it used an internal stack that was a fixed depth and had no stack overflow signal until it dropped the last address in the stack on the floor. We ended up shoving a fake sentinel address onto the stack every time we had to empty it. OTOH, that just turned that bug into others (too many operands on the stack, too many pops popping funny data,...). Definitely a bear to program.

  • I doubt anything built today will last as long as those die hards. Hell, we can't even send a probe to Mars without it "disappearing".
  • Does anyone know what sort of brains those birds have? I used to work with the RCA-1802 chip in late 70's, and someone told me that such a chip was on board one of the spacecrafts. Unfortunately I can not remember which one.

  • Long-term semiconductor electronics reliability (Score:5, Informative)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:32AM (#3936636) Homepage Journal
    I seriously question the long-term of any semiconductor electronics built today. No, there are no moving parts - except the electrons and any atoms they may knock about as they scurry on their way from source to drain and through the wires.

    Shipping reliable semiconductors has always been a lifetime issue. There is a "bathtub curve" of failures, with a higher number of early fallout, then a very reliable main lifetime, then failures rise again at wearout. Wearout happens through mechanisms like electromigration, where the electrons physically knock the metalization atoms out of place. In addition, all of the hot process steps like diffusion continue to happen, just at much slower rates. High reliability semiconductors are "burned in", run at higher temperatures and voltages than normal, to force them past that early fallout and throw those parts away.

    So what does this mean to space electronics? First, radiation just doesn't help. You can design rad-hard, but the crystal lattice is still taking damage, and it's cumulative. The low temperature helps to slow down wearout mechanisms.

    But the big problem is modern technology. The smaller geometries will simply wear out faster. Finer wires are more subject to electromigration, though using copper is an improvement because the atoms are heavier than aluminum. But gates are thinner, as are diffusions and spacings, non of which helps long life. When designing a burn-in regimen, it's getting tougher to get past early failures without approaching wearout. While frequency can be reduced to increase lifetime, scaling voltage down is getting tougher, because we're running darned close to minimums, already.

    One of my pet thoughts is the idea of electronics for a multi-generation starship. Other than slowing it down, stopping as much as possible, reducing voltages, etc, it's a tough problem. Maybe the best way is to scrape the bargain bins for old technology.
    • I seriously question the long-term of any semiconductor electronics built today.

      I agree entirely with your concern, but I'm not so worried myself. Most semiconductor failures (other than those caused by overvoltage/overcurrent/overtemperature conditions, which are not "normal operation") are packaging failures. e.g. the hermetic seal on breaks and contaminants leak in, physical stress disturbs the wire bonds, etc. Closely related are impurities that were introduced during manufacturing.

      In my experience, quality control has increased greatly in the semiconductor industry since the early 70's. It's not just the production environment which has improved, it's knowledge about the overall process (including testing and burn-in) that has advanced. The regimens that were being applied to mil-spec parts in the 70's have been greatly improved and are applied to consumer-grade parts today, in quantities of billions of units.

      I agree that at some point the scaling/geometry issues and radiation tolerance begin to become the dominant factor. But IMHO we aren't at that point yet; packaging failures still dominate.

      • I find people commenting on the long-term viability of current components funny.

        Most of these people have burned out a motherboard, or componenets, etc by doing stuff like OVERCLOCKING. While those in the industries intending to have something last for a period of time know better. (And quite often underclock).

        I've never had electronic hardware fail under normal use. Only under abuse. (Harddrives excluded, in 15 years I've lost one to hardware failure).
        • Overclocking vs underclocking is something far out of the range of this discussion. These probes use chips specially designed for the purpose (like those radiation hardened Pentiums you heard about a while back). At that level, there is no underclocking or overclocking. You run it a the clock frequency it was designed to go, not questions.

  • Pioneer 10, now 30 years old and driving a Porsche (Score:3, Funny)

    by Reverend Beaker ( 590517 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:33AM (#3936638)
    Pioneer 10 has also recently divorced its wife, a Tandy TRS-80, and has been seen tooling around town with a perky young AMD. Scientists have theorized that Pioneer 10 may soon take up skydiving in a vain effort to prove that it is still young. "We hope that Pioneer 10 will just admit to its age and settle down, possibly move to florida and play some golf" said Dr. James Tooly of NASA, "It's just disgraceful..."
  • I also was launched thirty years ago, and have continued to function more or less as intended since 1972.

    I am still giving back data, though whether it is useful or not is definitely a matter of opinion. Sadly, international scientists don't seem to contact me much these days, but I would hope to be able to continue to learn and provide information to others for a few more decades at least...

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • The B52 combat aircraft that are working in afganistan today were delivered in 1962 [af.mil]. I agree that they might have recieved some maintence in the interim, but the airframes are older than tha pilots in almost all cases. Now thats reliability.

    SD
  • ... things were made more solid because the technology was new. They didn't really know how strong they had to build things to make it do what it's supposed to do. Now we know. A modern probe or sattellite will therefor not last for 20+ years. They will - stupid enough - only last as long as they are supposed to.

  • Not suprised (Score:5, Funny)

    by af_robot ( 553885 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @08:43AM (#3936689)
    Pioneer 10 is still functioning 30 years after it was launched in 1972, and is still sending back scientific data. The article mentions that two other old space craft, Voyager, and IMP-8 are still functioning after over 20 years...

    Even numbered releases always were the stable ones.
  • Can't help but wonder if the present generation of "faster, better, cheaper" probes will ever live this long though.
    Interesting point, but do they need to? How long is long enough. Is it a waste of money/time to build it to last for 30 years?

    For near earth stuff, it would make more sense to build it just good enough and save the money for the next project. For far flung stuff (like voyager and pioneer), is the data useful? If not, what a waste of resources.

  • & Still producing 'new science' (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Martin S. ( 98249 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @09:01AM (#3936825) Journal

    And according to this week's New Scientist are still producing 'new science'.

    Apparently they are slowing down relative to the sun, due to the action of some unknown force, which may be linked to dark matter.

    Synopsis here:
    http://www.newscientist.com/news/search/dosearch .j sp?advsearch=pioneer+&searchtype=all&x=18& y=1

    Though you'll have to buy an issue or wait a week to view the full text.

  • Voyager Status reports online (Score:3, Informative)

    by erik_fredricks ( 446470 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @09:05AM (#3936850)
    NASA still publishes semi-regular status reports on both Voyagers here [nasa.gov].
    --

  • IMP-8 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Deep Penguin ( 73203 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @10:05AM (#3937256) Homepage Journal
    I ran the first Southern Hemisphere IMP-8 ground station [penguincentral.com] from McMurdo [penguincentral.com] over its first winter in 1995. It's amazingly robust, largely, I would say, due to its simplicty - no data recorders to fail, it just transmits what it senses in real time. If you don't have a ground station under you right now, that data is lost. Good to see the old girl is still cranking away.

  • faster, better, cheaper? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jrst ( 467762 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2002 @10:28AM (#3937423)
    When it was launched, P10 & P11 were some of the cheapest planetary missions (if not the cheapest, but my memory's going :). I can only speak to the imaging system (the imaging photopolarimeter, or IPP), which was, and I believe still is, unique among deep space missons...

    One of the big cost reductions came from using spin-scan imaging: spin the spacecraft with a 1-pixel wide imager, and rectify the image back here. No small task when you have to acount for the *fast* relative motions of the spacecraft and the object being imaged (the first unrectified image of Jupiter looked like a *long* sausage). As I remember, those images were transmitted back at a whopping rate of 256 or 1024 bits/sec. Also, only two imaging tubes were used--blue & red--with green left to be "synthensized". The image rectification software was made to work eventually; the green synthesis always required a human to make color judgements.

    What made it work, and still work--not always well, but good enough--was a lot of blood, sweat and tears down here, and not a lot of technology up there.

    Modern designs might be "better" by some standards, but not faster and definitely not cheaper.
  • NASA uses "Better" advisedly.

    Of course they won't be working after 20 years! They
    are "better" because they are faster and cheaper.

    They are not "better" in the way Webster would say.

  • I've got a Volkswagen that old, and it's still running, and it was designed in the 1940's, and retailed for about $4000 in 1972.
  • exactly like my search for my next girlfriend...faster...better...cheaper...

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