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NASA Space

After Silence, NASA's Voyager Finally Phones Home - With a Device Unused Since 1981 (mashable.com) 71

Posted by EditorDavid from the phoning-home dept.
Somewhere off in interstellar space, 15.4 billion miles away from Earth, NASA's 47-year-old Voyager "recently went quiet," reports Mashable.

The probe "shut off its main radio transmitter for communicating with mission control..." Voyager's problem began on October 16, when flight controllers sent the robotic explorer a somewhat routine command to turn on a heater. Two days later, when NASA expected to receive a response from the spacecraft, the team learned something tripped Voyager's fault protection system, which turned off its X-band transmitter. By October 19, communication had altogether stopped.

The flight team was not optimistic. However, Voyager 1 was equipped with a backup that relies on a different, albeit significantly fainter, frequency. No one knew if the second radio transmitter could still work, given the aging spacecraft's extreme distance.

Days later, engineers with the Deep Space Network, a system of three enormous radio dish arrays on Earth, found the signal whispering back over the S-band transmitter. The device hadn't been used since 1981, according to NASA.

"The team is now working to gather information that will help them figure out what happened and return Voyager 1 to normal operations," NASA said in a recent mission update.
It's been more than 12 years since Voyager entered interstellar space, the article points out. And interstellar space "is a high-radiation environment that nothing human-made has ever flown in before.

"That means the only thing the teams running the old probes can count on are surprises."
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After Silence, NASA's Voyager Finally Phones Home - With a Device Unused Since 1981 More

After Silence, NASA's Voyager Finally Phones Home - With a Device Unused Since 1981

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  • Take note, kids... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday November 03, 2024 @03:44PM (#64916829)

    That is what actually solid, redundant and reliable engineering looks like.

    • It is worth noting that today we have the ability to make components even more reliable than then.

      Not that we always do. Profit, you know.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. But we usually do not. And on system design level, I somewhat doubt we can even replicate that feat.

        • Speaking to your original comment, it has more to do with who is doing it versus what is possible with current tech. And there is more than a half century of experience to build on.

          So I was thinking more if you had a team today that was similar to the one that launched "v'ger" in terms of dedication, aptitude, attitude and moxie and gave them the tools available today they would accomplish much more. And the project leader is key.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            And I doubt that. The Voyager team was exceptional in every regard. You cannot create teams like that. You can just try and get lucky. And the second thing is that you will have a lot more problems finding people for it today.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          No one knew what the space environment was like past Saturn, so the Voyagers were overengineered for a considerably tougher environment than it actually encountered (fortunately).

      • Us Carbon Units like the money ðY

      • Re:Take note, kids... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday November 03, 2024 @04:31PM (#64916915)

        There's still the matter of power, though. For this particular type of mission, I don't think we can do much better than an ASRG, which has the same power output as an RTG on 1/4 the plutonium... but it's still plutonium, with the same half-life, so you'd probably want to go with the full mass and waste a lot of power up front just to (partially) overcome the half-life issues and still have a decent power supply running things a century from now.

        You're going to want a nice laser system on there for a higher data rate at lower power levels over longer distances. And probably a bunch of instrumentation that scientists really wish they'd been able to put on the Voyager probes if they'd known they could still be getting useful data a half century later and been able to convince politicians to fund it.

        Of course, we could also look into better propulsion to get the probe further prior to power failure. A nuclear fusion rocket is something we should be able to build in the not-too-distant future (if you plan to live at least a few more decades), and might be able to get a probe to the next nearest star before the people who built it all die of old age.

        Personally, I think we ought to be doing it just because we can, the science return would be awesome, and it's unlikely to be a thing that causes infighting. And it ought to be a 'swing around the target star and return home' mission so our great-great-grandchildren can recover it if they choose to do so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sconeu ( 64226 )

          Personally, I think we ought to be doing it just because we can, the science return would be awesome, and it's unlikely to be a thing that causes infighting. And it ought to be a 'swing around the target star and return home' mission so our great-great-grandchildren can recover it if they choose to do so.

          Uh, you do realize that after 45 years, the Voyagers are roughly 25 billion km from earth, right?
          And that the distance to Proxima Centauri is 40 TRILLION km. So we could expect (with current rocket technology) a 72000 year (1600*45) one way trip, or a 144000 year round trip to the nearest target star. That would be a lot more than our "great-great-grandchildren).

          • The Voyagers are ballistic; I'm talking about putting a fission engine we haven't built yet (we have solid theory, it isn't as big a deal as an over-unity fission reactor but it's still a lot of engineering to go) onto a new probe. It should be able to do somewhere between 0.05 and 0.10c.

            That's roughly a 40-80 year trip one-way. Assuming it actually achieved the lower end, that's a 160 year round-trip.

            Then again, even with a fission rocket, the mass limits might prevent taking enough fuel for the maneuver

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by cusco ( 717999 )

              If you just want to send back some photos we have the technology to do that today, although neither the political nor financial will to do so. The Breakthrough Starshot project would arrive in 20-30 years on a on-way trajectory.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

              • Breakthrough Starshot is a giant pantload. Nobody's sending microprobes at significant fractions of c that could get a signal back to Earth, never mind carry powered instrumentation.

                It's a ridiculous fantasy whose only saving grace is that nobody's ever going to put it to the test so it will never be seen to fail.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by cusco ( 717999 )

                  Like I said, we lack the financial will. Unfortunately there's plenty of political and financial will to send unlimited weapons to slaughter civilians overseas. I don't understand some people's priorities . . .

              • >nor financial will to do so.

                Ahh, but the Russians do!

                They are going to apply one thousandth of one percent of what google is going to pay them, and . . .

        • Pulling out an envelope (okay, opening ChatGPT), let's sketch this out. Imagine we want to our probe to reach Alpha Centauri in 50 years. It would have to be traveling at about 8.75% of c, or 26,000 km/s (58 million mph). And of course once it got there, it would still be traveling 8.75% c, making taking pictures or swinging around and coming back a bit of a challenge. Voyager 1, the fastest moving man-made object, is traveling at 17km/s (38,000 mph) and would take approximately 70,000 years to reach Alpha

          • We are actually tantalizingly close to being able to build the required engine. And given how BIG space is, passing through a planetary system at ~.08c isn't likely to be a problem for gathering some data.

            There are two issues I do see with the concept, though - I have difficulty believing we could put sufficient shielding on the front of the craft to protect against relativistic impacts, and despite the unbelievable achievements of the Voyager probes I think expecting something we throw into space to funct

        • And it ought to be a 'swing around the target star and return home' mission so our great-great-grandchildren can recover it if they choose to do so.

          That makes it 1000x harder. If you're going fast enough to get there in a century, you're going way too fast for a star's gravity to slingshot you or slow you down significantly, and too fast to be in the target system long enough for a light sail to slow you down significantly. So you're carrying all the fuel you needed to build up the speed again to scrub it,

        • JPL, is actually working on a fusion rocket. As a side gig of the plasma engine Vasimir.
          It is already kind of working.
          Check their web site.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          and been able to convince politicians to fund it.

          Good luck with that, NASA couldn't even convince Congress to fund Voyager as far as Uranus much less Neptune. They had to sell it as a trip to Saturn, and then launch them during the only time period in the next two centuries when the Grand Tour was possible. After the spacecraft were under way they went back to Congress, hat in hand, and said, "We have these two missions which could go somewhere the Russians can't get to, do you want to win this dick-waving contest?"

          • Ah yes. I posted just the other day that science in space is what NASA accomplishes despite being a politically handicapped pork barreling project.

    • Bah, just toss it out there, it's good enough. We can just fix it later with some patches!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. Unless you cannot because a) it already got hacked and it is too late or b) it already blew up or c) you do not actually have the incentives, funds or expertise to do that fix. Like, I don't know, Crowdstrike, MS Exchange online, countless ransomware incidentes, the recent self-destroying Intel CPUs, etc.

        • Self destroying CPU is actually pretty cool mission impossible spy vs spy shit.

          "Your mission, should you choos..%Y&%TT%TYpfftzzzzzz!!!!" (Smoke drifts up from computer)
          "Oh shit! Wait, what the fuck was the mission?!"

      • Bah, just toss it out there, it's good enough. We can just fix it later with some patches!

        Sheesh! Modded down, then seemingly taken seriously by the first commenter who replied to what you wrote! Does EVERY sarcastic comment here now require a "sarc" tag to be recognized as such?

        • Lol, they have no sense of humor. It's quite sad, really. But it's ok. I expect it for a bunch of super OCD aspies.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          Well, that's the way that software is delivered today, why not hardware? (obligatory) /sarc

    • At some point, engineering boils down to psychology rather than specific knowledge. We were in a position to make something like that at the time. Maybe we could do better today, or maybe we couldn't even equal it if we tried our best.

      • At some point, engineering boils down to psychology rather than specific knowledge. We were in a position to make something like that at the time. Maybe we could do better today, or maybe we couldn't even equal it if we tried our best.

        Redundancy isn’t exactly a concept we’re still trying to figure out how to teach the younger generation. Anything can be made reliable given enough time and money. The psychology (quality) behind it, boils down to usually those two factors . Same as it did when we built Voyager.

        • There's also a lot of will and cultural gravitas behind something like Voyager. It's not a static product: They've been actively changing it the whole time from Earth, and not entirely within modes foreseen by the original mission. That's where psychology and culture come into it. Yes, redundancy, but also emphasis on adaptability and mission-focus rather than development-focus.

          Voyager was designed for the mission, bringing together the capabilities of an entire generation for an objective result, not
    • That, and not having to be concerned about next quarter's numbers.

    • That is what actually solid, redundant and reliable engineering looks like.

      Good point, and well said. I do wonder though - if we were limited to the RF receiving technology that was available when Voyager was launched, would we still be hearing this whisper-of-a-whisper from so far away?

      That aside, I find it exciting and awe-inspiring that the craft is still sending us useful data and responding to commands. "Redundant and reliable engineering" indeed - not to mention inspirational.

      I tend to anthropomorphize Voyager, and I know I'm not alone. Sometimes that lonely tech artifact dr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        That is what actually solid, redundant and reliable engineering looks like.

        Good point, and well said.

        Thank you.

    • That is what actually solid, redundant and reliable engineering looks like.

      Ironically the kids that are still driving through cellular dead zones through the outskirts of a single city in a single state on a single planet in the 21st Century, don’t really know what the hell you’re bragging about.

      Solid. Redundant. Reliable. Uh huh.

  • Brings a smile to my face (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PuddleBoy ( 544111 ) on Sunday November 03, 2024 @05:09PM (#64916987)

    All of us here have seen good, bad and mediocre software and hardware development over the last 40+ years. We've even gotten used to seemingly-endless bugs as evidence of ever-progressing functions. Identify, correct, come out with the next rev.

    But when I think of the mindset that developed spacecraft for NASA in the 60s & 70s, they never had that luxury. It (mostly) had to be right the first time. Very limited chance to correct it later. Roadside service calls not an option.

    So when I hear about a device on Voyager that has been off for 40+ years and is suddenly needed, and it still works, I'm like OMFG. Engineers toiled over that to make sure it was rock solid. It was personal to them. It was dedication, intellectual rigor and pride.

    It's rather uplifting.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      I get similar feelings watching some brilliant people reverse-engineer and repair Apollo-era electronics including the Apollo Guidance Computer. On YouTube CuriousMarc has been documenting much of this. Fantastic stuff. There's a video of a real AGC running original code, controlling a lunar lander simulator, performing what it thinks is a real landing. So cool. Smart people then, smart people now.

      I get similar feelings watching the mars rovers continue to perform above and beyond expectations. And the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Your USB charger for your phone has a more powerful computer in it than the Apollo Guidance Computer. That never fails to amaze me.

    • True, but let's also not forget that in order for communications to remain possible, past and current teams at NASA have had to leverage their ingenuity and creativity, with their understanding of the specifications of the probe to guide them. It's not just that the hardware was built rock solid--after all, there are components that did fail. It's also that there exists proper documentation of the specifications and institutional knowledge that have enabled recovery after the failure of those components.

      T

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Radio technology has developed considerably since the probes were launched, which probably really helped pick up these weak signals from the other transmitter. These days low cost parts like LoRA transceivers operate below the noise floor, thanks in part due to tech developed for space use.

    • My first real job after getting a B.S. in C.S. was for a company that did real-time process control for heavy industry. Our standards were similar to JPL, NASA, etc. Our goal was to create software that never needed an update or maintenance. You close the door on the server room, lock it, and walk away. We did all our projects that way. None of them ever had any problems. None. You have a different mind set and way of developing code. It was a good experience for early in my career.

  • "Hi, this is Voyager, calling to let you know about your car's extended warranty..."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Election spam is more like, "The Pioneer probes are changing the gender of your pets!"

      • CITIZEN, HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS? Recently the Voyager probe discovered that a few billion miles outside of our galactic sphere, there is a great new opportunity for you to make money while working from home!

  • ...into its five year mission.

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