back to article Voyager 1 space probe producing ‘anomalous telemetry data’

NASA engineers are investigating anomalous telemetry data produced by venerable space probe Voyager 1. A Wednesday announcment states that the probe is operating normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, and still doing science and phoning home with data. But Voyager 1’s attitude articulation and control system ( …

  1. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Alien

    Is it called the AE35 unit ?

    Voyager 1’s attitude articulation and control system (AACS) – kit that helps point the probe’s antenna towards Earth -

    and do they have a spare ?

    1. Alumoi Silver badge

      Re: Is it called the AE35 unit ?

      No, it's called V'ger.

      1. Roger Kynaston
        Go

        Re: Is it called the AE35 unit ?

        Beat me to it. Time to find Persis Khambatta and Stephen Collins.

        1. Doctor Evil

          Re: Is it called the AE35 unit ?

          " Time to find Persis Khambatta and Stephen Collins."

          She's ... somewhere out there. Sadly.

  2. spireite Silver badge

    And yet again, the OAP of space keeps going.

    I'd like to think of David Attenborough being the human equivalent.. He's over twice the age of the probe, and has probably travelled as much as Voyager-1

    If I had one wish that could be granted, it'd be for D.A to be on an alien world doing what he does best.

    1. Tom 7

      I wonder what D.A's carbon footprint is!

      1. bazza Silver badge

        Indirectly, probably pretty positive for the environment. Someone like him making a point can and does influence billions to be a bit more careful.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I wonder what D.A's carbon footprint is!

        Not sure he cares about his carbon footprint

        http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/18/david-attenborough-famine-population

      3. hoola Silver badge

        Directly quite high but the benefit of the work he has done will more than likely outweigh the negatives. When you compare that with the carbon footprint of many people in rich nations, jetting off everywhere on a regular basis, driving huge cars and the massive amount waste they produce, directly or indirectly I would suggest the David's carbon footprint is very good value.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If I had one wish that could be granted, it'd be for D.A to be on an alien world doing what he does best.

      I agree……

      1. Tim99 Silver badge
        Unhappy

        Posting as an AC - Classy.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      "I'd like to think of David Attenborough being the human equivalent.. He's over twice the age of the probe, and has probably travelled as much as Voyager-1"

      Better yet, the mission was conceived in (IIRC), 1965 with the launch date in mind as the "once in a life time" launch window.. That makes the actual mission only a tad short of 60 years old now. It really was serendipitous that just as the maths and technology was developed to work out it was possible, matched up with the emerging technology (and will) to do it at almost the exact right time to actually launch such a mission. I think the next opportunity for something similar is in about 2150 or thereabouts. Hopefully, we'll not need to repeat such an energy saving route by then.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Better yet, the mission was conceived in (IIRC), 1965

        Likewise. And it has a lot less gone wrong than me..

    4. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      And yet again, the OAP of space keeps going.

      I wish I could exceed my design lifespan by that amount - and keep on functioning (relatively) normally.

      (Note I didn't say working - I have no ambition to do that for the rest of my days!)

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        "I wish I could exceed my design lifespan by that amount - and keep on functioning (relatively) normally.

        "

        Not me. No body would talk to me if every conversational exchange took better than 40 hours.

  3. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Boffin

    "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

    Dear me, and they're thinking of doing a software update with 160b/s of bandwidth ?

    Yikes.

    Some people are really hardcore.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

      Well it only has about 70KB of storage anyway.

      1. Ididntbringacoat

        Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

        "Well it only has about 70KB of storage anyway"

        We had REAL coders back in the day!

    2. Data Mangler

      Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

      Mind you, that's still more than twice the uplink speed we used to get with 1200/75 Prestel.

      Latency was a tad better though.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

        Oh $deity, that brings back awful memories! I had to slow down my typing or charcters would go missing! Luckily, I was rarely typing "live" on a remote system at 1200/75.

        1. MacroRodent

          Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

          The first modem I had at home ran at 300 baud in both directions. With patience, I could edit with Emacs through it, after I had thoroughly optimised the termcap for my adm42 terminal. Emacs wad really smart in reusing bits of text already on the screen.

          1. AlbertH
            Coat

            Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

            The first modem I had at home ran at 300 baud in both directions.

            Me too! I was on the "Information Superhighway" on a bicycle!!

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. Kane
      Joke

      Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

      "Dear me, and they're thinking of doing a software update with 160b/s of bandwidth ?"

      You guys have bandwidth?

      1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
        Joke

        Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

        Who'd 'ave thought forty five year ago we'd all be sittin' 'ere drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?

        bandwidth! You were lucky to 'ave bandwidth! We used to all work in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all using t'same IBM knotted string reader....

        1. zuckzuckgo Silver badge

          Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

          And we had to walk to the terminal room, twice each day, up stairs, both ways!

    5. Lon24

      Real FTP

      "Dear me, and they're thinking of doing a software update with 160b/s of bandwidth ?"

      Bah - when I was a lad our first 110bps GPO modem was pretty cool (like Voyager is now). Yep, it seemed like 41 hours to fill our teletype room with paper tape output from one computer and then re-input into another computer.

      Real FTP! Who needs this internetty thing?

    6. hoola Silver badge

      Re: "Voyager 1 is now 45 years old"

      The amazing thing is that it is still working. What other devices with this sort of complexity (for the time it was conceived) are still running?

      Very few and I would have thought almost none in this sort of hostile environment.

      Is it possible that any of the modern space missions could do the same?

      New Horizons might but I think it is highly unlikely, as stuff has got more sophisticated, reliability and longevity has generally decreased.

  4. Mr. V. Meldrew

    Awesome!

    Absolutely Awesome!

    1. Zenubi

      Re: Awesome!

      A rare use of the word awesome that actually fits.

  5. wolfetone Silver badge
    Pint

    I'm starting to think NASA's peak wasn't with the moon landings, but was with the Voyager probes. To design something like they did, to operate it like they are, for it to last as long as it has, and for it to still keep going - that can't be bettered I don't think. It really can't..

    A pint for the OAP in SPAAAAAAAAAAACE

    1. bazza Silver badge

      The unmanned space exploration programme has vastly over delivered. Very impressive!

      Knowing what can now be done, one would never send people back to the moon just to do more exploration of it; a rover can almost certainly do just as good a job, for longer and for less money. There has to be another reason to send astronauts somewhere.

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Reasons?

        • Politics
        • Humans are much more flexible in what they can do, a robot explorer is fixed in function

        Downside is that humans are much more delicate, tend to want to be returned back to Earth and need rather more support environment.

        1. HelpfulJohn

          " ... tend to want to be returned back to Earth ..."

          Not me. There's sufficient Science and fixing-stuff-up to be done on something like Mars to make a one-way trip look enticing.

          Should I get bored with a whole new planet to explore, and Mission Control to annoy, there's always the Moon, Mercury, Titan and the Jovian worlds to have fun and adventures on. Return to Earth is for wimps, crybabies and those with a future.

      2. Dom 3

        "a rover can almost certainly do just as good a job" - really? I read one estimate that two years worth of robotic geology on Mars could have been done in a single morning by a human with a hammer.

        1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

          I wonder what the cost comparison is

          1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

            Phenomenal. I wouldn't even like to guess, but I'd suspect 100,000 - 1,000,000 times more expensive for a human compared to a disposable machine.

            1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

              That's where I was going with it, although my estimate wasn't quite that wild!

      3. HelpfulJohn

        "There has to be another reason to send astronauts somewhere."

        Give me a nice toolkit and some spares [together with some window-wipes] and I could fix up all of those little rovers and stationary robots on Mars. I might even be able to find and fix Beagle II.

        That's more than *any* robot fixer could do and I wouldn't even need degrees in engineering to manage it. A simple link to the fixy-uppy databases on Earth would suffice.

        Though, knowing how lax NASA/JPL and everyone else is at archiving old PDF's of machinery designs I'd be surprised if all of the blueprints are still available.

        Humans are "intelligent fingers". With the backing of Central Command they can do far more than can any maintenance robots.

        Though they do need some complicated support systems, which is a decided disadvantage.

    2. swm

      I think it was a Viking mission near Jupiter where the JPL engineers said the computer was running slow because the unexpected radiation kept flipping bits in the active registers.

      This did not cause a crash but only a slow down. WOW!!

  6. Tom 7

    Perhaps an acoustic coupler was not the best idea!

    1. Andy The Hat Silver badge

      Are you suggesting someone ... or something ... has knocked the handset out of position on the coupler? Maybe V'ger has some trouble with Tribbles?

    2. Mast1
      Coat

      Choice of technology.....

      Hey, don't knock acoustic couplers: the last one I used (ca 1980) screamed along at 300b/s.......

      1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Choice of technology.....

        I remember the supreme joy of my first 28.8 kbps modem. Oh the dizzying speed of connection!

        I also remember the 'discussion' with my then MD at work, when he was wondering whether to go for a 28.8 modem rather than a 14.4 modem. I pointed out that the difference in price (about £15 at the time) was insignificant. (He was also the one who bought himself an analogue mobile phone just when digital ones were becoming available.)

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Choice of technology.....

          "(He was also the one who bought himself an analogue mobile phone just when digital ones were becoming available.)"

          Depending on where he was and where he was likely to be, that may have been a shrewd move. Analogue mobiles phones would have dropped significantly in price, have better coverage in general, still worked ok'ish in a poor signal area while the new digital ones would still have been at "early adopter" prices and pretty poor coverage outside of cities and large towns :-)

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Choice of technology.....

        I had an acoustic coupler once, she was very noisy until I put my hand over her mouth

        1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

          Re: Choice of technology.....

          @AC

          That's very hurtful to those of us who identify as acoustic couplers!

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: Choice of technology.....

            Stop screeching about it!

            1. mdubash

              Re: Choice of technology.....

              Sounds like my phone's ringtone...

  7. John Robson Silver badge
    Trollface

    41 hours of latency sounds bad...

    But it's probably easier than remote support to certain parts of the world (generally defined as a location where they share their screen on which they have remoted into another host and from there remoted into another host which has some access to the device you actually care about), where the latency is so bad that you can type a whole command line before a single character appears, and you get 10% character loss - so you really have to type at one character every 6 or so seconds (substantially longer if one of the characters doesn't make it, since you need to be confident of the timeout and then start again).

    At least 41 hours is so much latency that it's "plan the message, send the message, go home for the weekend"

    1. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

      Updating puts the "Oh no!" moment into a different timescale.....

    2. Little Mouse

      Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

      "plan the message, send the message, go home for the [night]"

      A fair few commentards, like me, would have worked along very similar lines back in the day.

      Write & polish your code. Submit it to the overnight processing queue on the mainframe. Only find out the next day just how badly bugged it all was.

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

        Instant compilation of code changed the very nature of writing code. Previously we tried to get it as correct as we could visually validate it as being correct, then asked the computer if it would graciously spare some time to compile the code. After the transition to pretty much interactive compilation we could offload a lot of the visual checking to the compiler itself.

        1. EarthDog

          Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

          Compiled code does not imply correct code

          1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

            Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

            Very true, however it is much more likely to be correct than code that does not compile.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

        We were luckier - 2 hour turnaround.

        1. G.Y.

          Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

          I has 24 hours (a batch place, long ago)

          1. Martin
            Happy

            Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

            In my first job, we had overnight batch runs, but there were frequent errors with the cards at the start and the end of each batch job not being set up correctly. I wrote a clever trick (can't remember how it worked now) which meant that the start/end card errors were reduced by 90%.

            Which meant that a lot more high priority jobs ran correctly far more often.

            Which meant that my low priority jobs frequently didn't get time to run overnight - which meant I often had to wait 36 hours for my job to be returned.

            Talk about being punished for doing the right thing...

          2. G.Y.

            Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

            One place I know of decided to use BASIC because it is interactive. The system worked by schoolkids filling up coding forms , MAILING them to that computer center, and waiting, and waiting, and ...

          3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

            At school, it was over a week. Someone went to the local Town Hall once per week to deliver the coding sheets and 5-hole paper tape and collected the printouts from the previous week. Due to scheduling, it could be two weeks before you found the typo!

            I'm not sure we learned about latency in the terms we think of today. Most likely it only got covered when we learned about mercury delay lines as storage :-)

        2. wub

          Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

          When I was a student, those taking classes were privileged to be able to use the 20 minute turnaround service (for short stacks) from 7 to 10 PM. Wow! Wheeeeeee! Sadly, I think that incomparable (at the time) speed did lend itself to "shoot from the hip" style, as one tried to fit in one more cycle of debug, submit, swear, repeat into those last few precious minutes before 10PM (22:00).

          1. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
            Pint

            Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

            At school, we wrote programs on prepared 'squared' sheets (one character per square) for transcription by data-entry clerks at the local university. A week later we received a print-out of the programme and the list of errors. Whereupon the programme was 'corrected' (ha ha!) and resubmitted. Eventually, about a month later (or more), the programme compiled and ran.... Then there was the problem of getting the right format for the output. We were only allowed a limited number of sheets. For very valid reasons.

            At university, we started with punched tape, then cards, then a terminal; Oh, the elation when a program ran correctly ------>

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

              On a company Assembler course three of us had a fair bit of hands on experience. Our questions tended to stress the lecturer. Come the day of the first compilation run - and the lecturer had a big smile on his face as he gave us back our listings full of errors.

              We looked at the listings. Then pointed out that the I/O macro expansion pass was missing - otherwise they would have been clean runs. He was crestfallen. He said that they saved their machine time budget by expecting student's first compilations to have no chance of being clean.

              1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
                Coat

                Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

                "On a company Assembler course...Come the day of the first compilation run "

                Shirly if it was an assembler course your code would be assembled not compiled? :-)

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

        One of the UK universities had a strategy for efficient mainframe scheduling. Any student tray that arrived when there wasn't a processing slot available - would instantly go to the "return" queue. When the student eventually picked up their tray - they would then submit it again. The strategy's success depended on no one hanging about to see if their tray was rejected.

      4. ICL1900-G3

        Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

        And then code a patch in hex in memory, patch a jmp instruction... and hope.

    3. tip pc Silver badge

      Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

      Re latency

      Sounds like any machine with Mcafee on it.

    4. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

      It's as good as, if not better than, some of the LoRa links I've messed with.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

      41 hours' latency? Luxury! On my O-Level computing course in 1978 we wrote the code out long-hand in class on Thursday and posted it to Kings' Lynn Tech. Someone at the Tech converted it to punch tape and on the following Wednesday morning we got the school mini-bus to the tech so we could run and de-bug it.

      Happy days.

      1. Dave559 Silver badge

        Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

        Yes, the latency may have been poor, but never underestimate the bandwidth of that pick-up truck school bus full of tapes…

    6. EarthDog

      Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

      Don't forget to run it through a simulator. The one you wrote before you sent the probe up so you test them side-by-side for months.

      You do have a simulator, don't you?

    7. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

      Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

      41 hours for a response, that's about the same response time as our service desk

  8. Sgt_Oddball

    The big dish

    It amazes me that it's still sending after all this time. Even more so that we're still able to recieve it.

    It does make me wonder what they've made their capacitors from for them to last this long (considering some start wobbling after 1,000 hours nevermind 276,000 hours and counting.)

    1. Paul Herber Silver badge

      Re: The big dish

      Capacitors? They were called condensors back in those days!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The big dish

        Condensors? Surely you mean Leyden Jars?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The big dish

      Capacitors don't degrade nearly so quickly when they are at the super low temperatures you get in space.

      1. Paul Herber Silver badge

        Re: The big dish

        How does that work with wet electrolytics?

    3. vogon00

      Re: The big dish

      IMHO, this is an example of older is better :-)

      The Voyager probes were constructed so long ago that the available tech was, by it's very nature, more radiation-tolerant, thermal-cycle-tolerant and generally more electrically and mechanically 'stable' than the much, much 'smaller' fabrication techniques used today.

      Anyone want to bet how long a 7nm process part will last in a high radiation environment without ridiculous amounts of shielding, at least from a very weight-sensitive spacecraft's POV.

      Also, and I've said this before - muchos kudos to the current Voyager operations team for keeping the things going process-wise, but don't forget the people who went before them, and the folks running the DSN.both now and in the past.

      If you feel the need to research something to find some history that can be applied to today's operations, look into the DSN.

      1. GSTZ

        Re: The big dish

        Hope that somewhere we still keep the knowhow and old gear needed to produce such remarkably slow but reliable equipment like we did in the past ...

        1. dboyes

          Re: The big dish

          Documentation. The manuals for that stuff are *enormous*.

  9. chivo243 Silver badge
    Go

    Don't ping it!

    See title!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't ping it!

      Ping request could not find host voyager1. Please check the name and try again.

  10. TheProf
    Alien

    Aliens! Petite rouge ones.

    Lister: Oh God, aliens... Your explanation for anything slightly peculiar is aliens, isn't it? You lose your keys - it's aliens. A picture falls off the wall - it's aliens. That time we used up a whole bog roll in a day, you thought that was aliens as well!

    1. 45RPM Silver badge

      Re: Aliens! Petite rouge ones.

      Well we didn't use it all, Lister. Who did?

  11. Franco

    I love reading these stories about the Voyager program, it's incredible how well designed and built it was to still be functioning so well so long past it's original requirements.

    1. Sam not the Viking Silver badge

      I too think the Voyager expeditions are exceptional in their continuing achievements.

      The modern argument is to build for a specified lifetime if it makes it cheaper, lighter, faster. Anything more is 'over-engineered'. The opportunities to extend the project beyond the expected lifetime as techniques develop is never part of the original plan.

      Some of these space probes have become icons of inventiveness.

      1. Eclectic Man Silver badge

        Re: Light bulbs

        The modern argument is that if a product is built to last, you can only sell one once. If it is built to fail, you can sell it over and over and over again. There is actually no problem making incandescent light bulbs that last pretty much forever. However the manufacturers realised that soon they would run out market, so the deliberately conspired to make bulbs that would fail after a certain (short) length of time.

        https://priceonomics.com/the-mysterious-case-of-the-113-year-old-light-bulb/

        1. Citizen99

          Re: Light bulbs

          I have a mid-1950s Radiogram, bought second-hand in the mid-1970s. I have a spare set of valves (vacuum tubes), never had to fit one yet. NOR any electrolytic condensor (capacitor). It thunders out the music input from our Virgin box every day.

          Thomas Flowers (Colossus) was right.

        2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

          Re: Light bulbs

          No, they "conspired" to make bulbs with known and reasonable efficiency. It's not difficult to make a bulb that lasts a hundred years when the filament is a slightly warm wire.

  12. Ashto5

    45 Years and still nothing changes

    160 bits per second, and signals take 20 hours and 33 minutes to reach the probe. Yes – that means round trip latency of 41 hours and six minutes.

    Pretty sure some off the newest websites run at those speeds and only get away with it because they are relying on your phone etc to have mega powers.

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: 45 Years and still nothing changes

      Pretty sure some off the newest websites run at those speeds and only get away with it because they are relying on your phone etc to have mega powers.
      Well, it is "highly important" to badly replicate standard browser functionality using several hundred Mb of competing imported JavaScript libraries.

  13. david 12 Silver badge

    "expected life span"

    The expected life span of Voyager is, and was, 70-80 years -- the period over which it will have enough power to signal earth. After that the golden plate is expected to last billions of years. The plate is part of the original mission, so you could say that is it's 'expected lifespan', but since this is an IT/computer article, I think that the 70~80 year figure is fair enough.

    For some scientists, V1 has already hit it's expected lifespan, since they turned off one of the instruments last year, at around about the expected time.

    Some parts of the original mission happened long ago, but it's fanciful to suggest that NASA 'expected' V1 or V2 to suddenly fail after the first part of the mission. They would have been seriously disappointed if one of them had failed early, and they are understandably chuffed that they have lasted so well, but that's not to say that they expected them to fail before the power runs out -- if that had been true, they would have saved weight and money by including a smaller power supply.

    1. My-Handle

      Re: "expected life span"

      Minor niggle:

      The golden plate / plaque was on the Pioneer spacecraft. The Voyagers have the golden records.

      </pedant>

      1. Archivist

        Re: "expected life span"

        I think he meant record.

        1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

          Re: "expected life span"

          "Hey, Qrdly, I've just seen the first alien probe of spring. Is it a record?"

        2. Sudosu Bronze badge

          Re: "expected life span"

          It will probably show up on Discogs in the late 2500s after someone retrieves it.

  14. nil0

    Deep Space Network

    Your usual public service announcement: https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

    1. Dave559 Silver badge

      Re: Deep Space Network

      It has to be said that NASA really does deserve almost as much kudos for its use of the web (since pretty much right from the beginning of the web) to make so much information about its mission reports and research findings easily accessible to the public, as it does for the actual missions and spacecraft themselves.

      Just as an example (but an obvious biggie), you could honestly get lost in the websites for all of the Apollo missions for weeks, and very enjoyably so, and that's only one part of everything they have done before and since.

  15. Eclectic Man Silver badge
    Boffin

    So Strong

    'As the signal is so strong'

    Well, 'strong' is open to interpretation. I found this on the Interpleb:

    "Question: What is the signal strength in watts received by the VLBA that is transmitted from Voyager 1? I recall that Voyager 1 transmits at 22 watts and is nearly 20 billion km away, so how weak is the signal here? — Robert

    Answer: The answer to your question happens to be included in a story about the VLBA detecting Voyager 1 in 2014. As you said, the radio strength of Voyager 1 is about 23 watts. This signal is directed toward Earth, but since Voyager 1 is about 15 billion kilometers from Earth, by the time Voyager 1’s signal reaches us its power is less than an attowatt, or a billionth of a billionth of a watt.

    Jeff Mangum"

    https://public.nrao.edu/ask/how-strong-is-the-signal-from-the-voyager-1-spacecraft-when-it-reaches-earth/

    I respectfully agree with the previous poster, this is truly AWESOME.

    1. Red Ted
      Go

      Re: So Strong

      Looking at the DSN Status Page, currently Canberra is listening to Voyager 2. It reports an RSSI of -156dBm and given that Voyager 2 transmits at 23W (+43dbm) that gives a link budget of 199dB, which is quite impressive.

      1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: So Strong

        @ Red Ted,

        Thanks very much for the DSN link, shows which ground stations are monitoring which satellites / probes, including JWST, SPP, Lucy, SOHO, ACE.

        Cheers, have one on me ---->

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Thats odd"

    Uh oh, looks like its reaching the edge of the simulation...

    1. Dr. G. Freeman

      Re: "Thats odd"

      *boink*

      It hits the side of the fish bowl.

      1. Just A Quick Comment

        Re: "Thats odd"

        "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight."

      2. Sudosu Bronze badge

        Re: "Thats odd"

        Nah, the simulation infrastructure will just work imperceptibly harder to provision more transversable space.

      3. Toni the terrible Bronze badge

        Re: "Thats odd"

        It shatters the isolation fish bowel, fragments begin to fall inward towards the inner system, very large fragments, if we survive that then we may then really get to see your aliens...

        1. timrowledge

          Re: "Thats odd"

          Somebody else that remembers “The Crystal Sphere” by Brin?

    2. billat29

      Re: "Thats odd"

      Look behind you - it will appear to be coming towards us......

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I knew it!

    I knew the millenium bug was going to cause chaos. I was right to build the shelter I have been living in for the last 23 years and don't even try to tell me I was over-reacting

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: I knew it!

      Nothing of the sort. It's being encrypted by ransomware.

  18. DS999 Silver badge
    Terminator

    The evolution to V'Ger

    Has begun!

  19. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Going, going

    Not gone!

  20. Dr Kerfuffle

    Hope it doesn't turn evil !

    I hope that it doesn't turn all evil and decide to return home to find its creator. And destroy all others as an 'infestation'.

    I'm pretty sure I watched a documentary about that once.

    Paul

    1. darklord
      Devil

      Re: Hope it doesn't turn evil !

      If it does We've got 45 years to plan then

  21. SAdams

    I wonder

    … if this could have anything to do with the “cosmological axis of evil”. Wild speculation, I know, but we really don’t understand as much as we think we do.

  22. greenwood-IT

    Re: I'm smarter...

    Ping -w 151200000

    If voyger1 a .com, .space or .extraspace TLD?

  23. cloudguy

    Signal is very weak, distance is very far, data is not making very much sense

    Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are our first interstellar space vehicles. They have both survived 45 years, which is a testament to their engineering and luck. Voyager 2 is not providing the same "incoherent" data as Voyager 1. This was why two and not one Voyager space vehicle were launched. Hopefully, some entity will capture one or the other Voyager and play the "golden record" onboard to discover something about who sent it into space. SNL had a comedy sketch about Voyager back in the day that a message was received on Earth from outer space indicating an alien life form listened to the Voyager "golden record" and replied, "Send more Chuck Berry."

  24. Paul Scutts

    Data is only valid when timing is correct, like "1"'s and "0"'s through a Mother Board. Voyager 1 is the first logically operating vehicle that is so far away from a star's influence upon space-time, that space-time has shifted significantly enough to cause data timing problems. So, make an adjustment for the difference in space-time and we should get back to valid data being received - simple. :)

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