Unbreakable Voyager space probes close in on a 50 year mission

"We're definitely going to make the 50th anniversary," says Professor Garry Hunt, one of the scientists responsible for NASA's Voyager mission, as Voyager 1 recovers from an unexpected pause in communications. Launched when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, the two Voyager spacecraft have endured almost half a …

[simonlb]

Absolutely Magnificent!

What a testament to the scientific and engineering genius of those engineers, who would probably been more than happy if these probes only lasted ten years. Let's hope they both reach that 50 year milestone and manage to eke out a few more years after that. Have one of these guys, you deserve it -->

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Absolutely Magnificent!

Indeed. Probably does not have INTEL INSIDE

[see Icon]

[jake]

Re: Absolutely Magnificent!

A lot of the code for the Voyagers was initially put together for the Viking program's CCS (Computer Command System), which Voyager shared for cost reasons. The computers were hand-built by JPL.

The code for the CCS was initially developed in Fortran IV, then ported to Fortran 77. These days, they mostly use C.

_{Strangely enough, I have never seen the braying fanbois calling to port it all to Rust. I wonder why ...}

[STOP_FORTH]

Re: Absolutely Magnificent!

There's very little oxygen out there, and not much water. I suspect there's no rust either.

[tsuch]

Re: Absolutely Magnificent!

As you note, Voyager's CCS CPU was borrowed from Viking's orbiter. The attitude control (AACS) CPU is a modified CCS CPU and the flight data handling (FDS) CPU was custom-designed for Voyager.

The software for the onboard computers has always been written in the assembly languages of the 3 CPU types. The ground system software--think of the mission control center you see on TV and in films--was originally written in Fortran (V, ported to 77) and ran on mainframe computers. That software was ported to or rewritten in C when the ground system moved off of the mainframes onto Unix workstations and PCs. See "Voyager Spacecraft and Fortran 5" (http://www.geonius.com/writing/other/voyager.html). Parts of the ground system may have been ported to Rust -- it's possible! :)

[Winkypop]

Keep going lads

It’s going to shite back here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Keep going lads

I'm not going to blame the poor buggers if they decide they have more important things in life than keeping in touch with us, with the way it's going down here.

[PhilipN]

"the people who came in originally and built it"

Nobel prizes all round.

[alain williams]

Re: "the people who came in originally and built it"

Probably the Wright Brothers Medal would be more appropriate.

[b0llchit]

Good parts, fantastic engineering and excellent engineers

The times when "a bit" of over-engineering really makes your day.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

Re: Good parts, fantastic engineering and excellent engineers

It's amazing. Do those things not have capacitors that dry out?

[PRR]

Re: Good parts, fantastic engineering and excellent engineers

> Do those things not have capacitors that dry out?

We have known for a century that electrolytic caps die young. For some (earthy) applications they were pluggable units. After consumer vacuum tubes (valves), they were the #2 item keeping local radio/TV repair shops in business. A mid-century RS or Allied catalog had pages and pages of cap listings.

Paper and film caps were much longer-lived, maybe especially in vacuum. A high-uFd film cap would be really expensive, but cheap in the overall program costs.

[Arthur the cat]

I wish …

JPL engineers had designed and built my joints. They're playing up something rotten in this damp weather.

[druck]

Re: I wish …

The Radio Thermal Generator would still be keeping them quite toasty.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: I wish …

Diodes all down your left side giving you gip again?

Depressing isn't it, you ask for them to be replaced but no one ever listens...

[Springsmith]

Re: I wish …

Brain the size of a planet, and you ask him that.

[DS999]

They're outliving

An increasing number of humans who were born after their launch date - and more and more of the engineers who were on the original project.

Now that they've made it past heliopause there aren't a lot of milestones or major discoveries awaiting them, but it will continue to be interesting to see just how long they ultimately last. I hope there is enough funding to continue to communicate with them so long as they are capable, even if they reach the point where every instrument has to powered off. If their budget is cut by congress I hope some private benefactors will step in to keep the lights on as long as they continue to operate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: They're outliving

They are being left running as a warning to executives and marketers about what can happen if you don't keep your engineers focused on making products shitty.

[jake]

Re: They're outliving

"Now that they've made it past heliopause there aren't a lot of milestones or major discoveries awaiting them"

Just the entire Universe outside our little solar system, that's all.

[DS999]

Re: They're outliving

We're not going to get any information "on the entire universe beyond our little solar system" from the Voyager probes. They will no longer have power to operate ANYTHING long before they'd even make it out of the solar system - i.e. past the Oort cloud.

[TRT]

Re: They're outliving

But if they do learn all that is learnable we had better watch out for them returning that knowledge to the creator. WWKD?

[alain williams]

Re: They're outliving

there aren't a lot of milestones or major discoveries awaiting them

Not that we know of ... if we did know then they would not be discoveries.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: They're outliving

Just the entire Universe outside our little solar system, that's all.

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

[ecofeco]

They don't make 'em like they used to

Viking: 50 years of unbroken continuous space travel

Boeing: 24 hrs. The front falls off.

Space X: "Are you even trying, Boeing?"

China: "We've got our own space station, thanks."

[Neil Barnes]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

Perhaps we need some Egyptian engineers? The pyramids still seem to be there after four or five thousand years...

Admittedly, how long they actually _worked_, as in keeping dead kings from getting stolen, is open to debate.

[jake]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

"The pyramids still seem to be there after four or five thousand years..."

Not all that surprising. I rather suspect that if you were to pile up nearly 6 million tons of anything solid, pretty much anywhere on Earth, you'd still see more than just a trace of it nearly 5,000 years later.

_{It'd be kinda hard to accelerate it to solar escape velocity, though ...}

[Stumpy]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

I take it you've never seen Stargate?

(what do you mean, it wasn't a documentary?)

[Neil Barnes]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

To be fair, Jake - the locals had all the nice pretty rocks off the outside years ago, and at least one is shorter because the top was made wide enough for tour groups in the 1800's to picnic on the platform.

[jake]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

However, and as I said, "you'd still see more than just a trace of it nearly 5,000 years later.".

[DS999]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

Just look at Mayan/Incan ruins for a counterexample. Similarly made out of lots of rock, far less old, and are so worn and overtaken by the jungle that they are still being discovered today. The pyramids in Egypt benefit from a climate ideal for preservation. Only truly dry places like Atacama would be better.

Chichen Itza, the most famous Mayan pyramid, was basically a big overgrown hill with a little temple looking outcrop on top when it was "discovered" in the late 1800s. It was massively restored to the modern day tourist attraction we're familiar with. The equivalent would be if we replaced all the marble casing stones on the Great Pyramid to make it look like it did when it was built.

[jake]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

Again, there is still more than just a trace visible.

Modern drones help augment the human eye, of course. But the objects (buildings, banks, ditches, whatahaveyou) are still there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

"so worn and overtaken by the jungle"

Sounds like my daft old man on his allotment. He's a relic you'll regularly find in a jungle...

He had me moving ancient oil soaked railway sleepers with concrete stuck to them a few weeks back, 100kg each easy, fucking soul destroying bastards to shift...pretty sure I now know what it was like to build the pyramids now. In fact, it was probably easier then because I doubt they had old Mancs 'motivating' them along with general insults like "when I was your age, I'd have been able to carry that on the end my dick", "A break? Get off your arse you fanny!", "It's only wood, just fucking shift it, 12 more to go", "Me? Help? Look at me, I'm already old and fucked. Ask Bill over there...'Bill, what am I?' 'Bill: Old and fucked' See? Here Bill, come and look at this...'Bill: Yeah at his age, I'd have carried that on the end of my dick, if WW3 breaks out we're fucked'...that's what I said!".

I got it done, and my reward at the end was taking him for a beer..."Thanks for the help lad, it's your round isn't it?".

Should ship him to Russia to speak to Putin...Putin would be crying within the hour I'm sure...he already has a repertoire he can call on that he uses whenever he sees Putin on the TV..."Look at his fucking tiny hands, that c*nt couldn't build a sandcastle" and "he looks like the kind of thing a toddler would make if you gave them a couple of teaspoons, pipe cleaners and some playdough"..."I've seen harder bastards presenting on the BBC".

[Roj Blake]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

And let's not forget Silbury Hill in Wiltshire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

"four or five"

Is that dependent on where you stand on the phantom time hypothesis? Sorry nerds, I just wasted half a day of Googling for you! Welcome to the rabbit hole!

[0laf]

Re: They don't make 'em like they used to

The probes might not be doing much after a few more years but they will still be around for millions of years, and possibly until the heat death of the universe. I think that makes 5000yr look a bit amateur really.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Closer to home

Someone moved the UK's oldest satellite and there appears to be no record of exactly who, when or why.

Launched in 1969, just a few months after humans first set foot on the Moon, Skynet-1A was put high above Africa's east coast to relay communications for British forces.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwrr58801yo

Bad record keeping or, is there another explanation (see icon)

[RobThBay]

Re: Closer to home

Didn't John Connor and his gang take out Skynet?

[PB90210]

Re: Closer to home

Like any true Englishman, lost but too proud to ask directions

[Pseudonymous Clown Art]

Re: Closer to home

It was 1969...so there is the third explanation...

https://imgur.com/a/dRQlkel

[HoftHome]

Voyager Space Probes close a half-century mission . . .

Super-Kewl!

[Madf1ier]

Users...

This real takeaway here, obviously, is how much easier IT can be when PEBKAC does not apply.

[HoftHome]

What a wide-ass window: 10 minutes? Really? You may as well make it 45s!

What a wide-ass window: 10 minutes? Really? You may as well make it 45s!

[Annihilator]

Uh oh..

“"We're definitely going to make the 50th anniversary," says Professor Garry Hunt”

Absolute kiss of death from management there, calling the putt as he walks off the green before the ball has even finished rolling.

[smudge]

Re: Uh oh..

I have had the misfortune to work for Garry Hunt.

In the 90s, he was head of the management consultancy unit of the UK systems house Logica. It was chaos.

To be fair to him, it can't have been easy managing around 90 people - all of whom fancied themselves as management consultants, and thus had their own ideas about how the company should have been run!

[jake]

Re: Uh oh..

To be fair, Hunt's a scientist, not a manager.

An imaging specialist, to be sure, but a scientist nonetheless. See this ElReg article from a couple years ago:

https://www.theregister.com/2018/09/18/garry_hunt_interview/

[Steve K]

Re: Uh oh..

You can also see a much younger version of Dr. Garry Hunt interviewed by Patrick Moore on Sky At Night on iPlayer in 1986/1989 when Voyager got to Uranus and Neptune respectively.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02vkf6f

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02vkp7b

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: Uh oh..

A right Garry Hunt and no mistake then...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Uh oh..

Common mistake, you're thinking of his brother Berkley.

[ComicalEngineer]

Just wait until "V'Ger", comes home to study the "carbon units"

[Will Godfrey]

Just hope it doesn't apply it's 'directive' of eliminating carbon based 'infestations'

[Boris the Cockroach]

Just teach it the meaning of love (no tongues)

[deadlockvictim]

V'ger

Time to go look for the dusty copy of 'Star Trek — The Motion Picture' and relive the late 1970s.

[Annihilator]

Re: V'ger

Completes its mission to absorb all knowledge of the known universe and then returns to earth. All knowledge... except about what it is and who created it..

[CVHOAX.COM]

CVHOAXdtcm

LOL ! Combustion and Thrust do NOT exist in a vacuum. The YouTube channel Cody's Lab proved it. SPACE IS FAKE ! My name is the proof.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: CVHOAXdtcm

Wow! You really went down the rabbit hole! Was the trip rocket assisted? And you signed up here just to post your ignorant spam? Why? This is the sort of site with readers who will just ridicule you (and deservedly so!)

[imanidiot]

Re: CVHOAXdtcm

I'm not going to take the risk to visit some random nutters website, and if you believe Cody's Lab did anything of the sort you are either ignorant or stupid

[Rich 11]

Re: CVHOAXdtcm

My money's on both.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: CVHOAXdtcm

My mind is poossible messed up after experiencing the early days of the internet but that chaps ID I read as CHOADxtdcm.

Brave man to advertise as a choad.

[Dinanziame]

Wow that website is incredible

It's like you know that if you turn over a stone in the forest and dig a bit you're going to find all kind of cockroaches and wiggly worms. You know it's there, but you never want to do it and see it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: CVHOAXdtcm

How do we stop these tuna melts from bringing their spam onto every platform they can find?

[Patrician]

Re: CVHOAXdtcm

Wow, what a great way to show how little science you understand; you’re correct in that there is no combustion, in space, but rockets do not rely on combustion or thrust for their acceleration in the same way an aircraft does.

The combustion happens inside the engines using a fuel and an oxidant, these two combine to “burn” and cause the gases to expand and its’ that expansion that causes acceleration using Newtons 3rd law of motion; “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.

You can demonstrate this for yourself by using some roller-skates and throwing a house brick behind you; the result will be that you move in the opposite direction to the way you threw the brick.

[NickHolland]

Enterprise Grade --> Voyager Grade

I never could figure out the IT world's use of "Enterprise Grade"...did these people ever watch Star Trek? That dang ship broke every week, and in the same way twice a year!

Let's call it "Voyager Grade" -- even when it breaks, you can get it back up and running.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Enterprise Grade --> Voyager Grade

> Let's call it "Voyager Grade"

careful or you will end up in the Delta Quadrant.

[Francis Boyle]

But you get

an unlimited supply of shuttles. . . or maybe just novelty USB sticks.

[payne747]

If JPL made Starlink...

It wouldn't be like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks!

https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html

[0laf]

Onward!

It'll be a sad day when they stop talking.

But I do find it mindblowing that these probes (Plus the Pioneers and New Horizons) will likely outlast the Earth