back to article 'Best job at JPL': What it's like to be an engineer on the Voyager project

The Voyager probes have entered a new phase of operations. As recent events have shown, keeping the venerable spacecraft running is challenging as the end of their mission nears. As with much of the Voyager team nowadays, Kareem Badaruddin, a 30-year veteran of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), divides his time between …

  1. David Harper 1

    Now there's a real rocket scientist

    I'm sure every one of us reading this article wishes they were Kareem Badaruddin. I know I do.

    1. Joe W Silver badge

      Re: Now there's a real rocket scientist

      Most scientists and engineers working in roles close to science (like at NASA, ESA, university labs etc.) really enjoy their jobs. I know I did, but the job opportunities are getting more scarce as you move up the ladder in your qulifications and work experience. Many positions are fixed term (one to four years), and then you have to move on. There are tenured positions, but those are basically through a dead man's (or woman's) shoes... You need to be pretty good as a scientist and brilliant in getting research funds (yes, that order) and of course bloody lucky.

      1. UCAP Silver badge

        Re: Now there's a real rocket scientist

        I'm lucky, I've been working in the space industry for my entire career (over 35 years now, just a few more years to retire) primarily as an engineering consultant. Never have I thought of changing my career path; I've just had too much fun and made too many friends over the years.

        1. Woodnag

          Re: Now there's a real rocket scientist

          You are lucky. JPL suffers repeated layoffs and budget pauses, such as MSR.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Now there's a real rocket scientist

      It must be a strange role. Mind-bending diagnosis of something that you can't touch, well beyond its planned lifetime and is no longer quite as-built combined with very long latency in the comms.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Now there's a real rocket scientist

        I used to look after a lot of kit used in secret applications, by various military/defense/space/etc.

        I once had a US Rear Admiral ring me to give me the "heater treatment".

        I replied that I was in the UK, why hadn't he spotted that from the phone number and that he had broken multiple US laws telling me the things that he had....Click!

        It helped me to resolve their problem though, which was better than the normal cycle I had to endure:

        "We have a problem with xyz"

        "Can you tell me what is wrong?"

        "No."

        "Can you tell me how I might cause a similar problem?"

        "No."

        "If I tried abc, might it show a similar problem?"

        "No."

        Until I got an answer of "Yes", and then I could resolve the problem.

        So, I totally understand NASA's diagnosis and fixing role.

        Oh, and yes, some of that kit may well have been on rockets, and certainly some equipment couldn't stand more than 1 minute of down-time during updates which had to work first time.

        Anon for very obvious reasons

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Now there's a real rocket scientist

          I'm super ultra lucky to work for a woman who's been with the program for 36 years, and who's honestly far smarter than I.

          They explain the problem to her, and she tells me the symptoms without all the secret squirrel stuff that I really don't need to know.

          Quite a rational and workable situation, which as you know is rare in this environment. I feel like I'm working for Admiral Grace Hopper but without the frequent butt-chewing.

          It's a crying shame there's only one of her. Which is why losers like me have a job.

          Anon for the same very obvious reasons

        2. DS999 Silver badge

          That's some real troubleshooting there

          "Can you tell me what is wrong?"

          "No."

          "Can you tell me how I might cause a similar problem?"

          "No."

          "If I tried abc, might it show a similar problem?"

          "No."

          Until I got an answer of "Yes", and then I could resolve the problem.

          Never had to work like that before, sounds challenging and incredibly frustrating. Not sure I'd be able to cope with the ridiculous nature of playing 20 questions when the pressure is on to fix something and they can't even tell me what needs fixing!

    3. Jedit Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      "I know I do."

      I know I don't. It's fascinating to read about how the Voyager Project continues to work miracles after all these years, but I wouldn't want the stress of knowing that if I made a wrong call one of our greatest achievements would be gone forever. I'm content to admire the work from afar, and let others have the amazing life.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "I know I do."

        Agreed, it's a great job, however, the rewards are limited to fame (amongst your peers only) while the risk is notoriety: going down in history as the person who broke Voyager. :-)

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          Re: "I know I do."

          Audentes Fortuna iuvat

          If you don't try, you will never succeed.

          It is better to fail than to do nothing.

          If you fail, at least you tried.

          1. Woodnag

            Re: "I know I do."

            "It is better to fail than to do nothing."

            It's not a binary choice between impossible/nothing. Plan a project as a sequence of achievable steps. Look at Sputnik. All it did was broadcast a signal until the battery died, but that achieved launch, orbit, and telemetry.

  2. 0laf Silver badge
    Angel

    Go V'ger

    It'll be sad day when they stop talking but also mind blowing that the machines will keep going, possibly for billions of years.

    1. KarMann Silver badge

      Re: Go V'ger

      I'm wondering how much of a tear-jerker the XKCD is going to be when they pull the plug. I'm looking at you, 695 Spirit.

    2. KittenHuffer Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Go V'ger

      I believe that even in the ‘vacuum’ the few atoms, particles, and even radiation that the Voyagers encounter will slowly erode them away. It’s likely that in less than a billion years (or even a few hundred million years) you wouldn’t be able to recognise them any longer.

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
        Alien

        Re: Go V'ger

        To be fair, in less than a billion years I doubt I would be able to recognise _anything_...

        1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Go V'ger

          Speak for yourself, personally I plan to live forever...

          So far, so good ;-P

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
            Windows

            Re: Go V'ger

            Are you "The One" who wants to live forever? Just keep an eye out for people wielding swords!

    3. sin

      Re: Go V'ger

      Well, in a few hundred years they wouldn't actually be "machines" but "things" when their RTGs go flat.

      But who cares :)

  3. Shuki26

    Great article

  4. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Amazing but probably in short supply

    Ah, the brilliance of the few! Training in the fundamentals for this kind of real engineering (which are primarily a way of thinking, not just a body of knowledge) has become an essential for general education in our intensely technology-driven societies, as opposed to aiming for provision of soft options that merely avoid "turning teens off".

  5. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
    Pint

    The engineers went further down the fault tree, and eventually managed to get a minimum program to the spacecraft to give a memory readout. That readout could be compared to one retrieved when the spacecraft was healthy. 256 words were corrupted, indicating a specific integrated circuit. Code was then written to relocate instructions around that failed area.

    Something that would make me feel a bit wobbly if doing it in a nice safe earthbound environment...fixing the problem on something all that way away is just something else.

  6. NXM Silver badge

    Where no Voyager has gone before

    "hoping that some degraded circuits might be "healed" by an annealing process"

    So it's similar to recrystallising the Enterprise's dilithium crystals then?

    Absolutely top quality remote engineering from these people though, they're inspirational.

  7. dave 93
    Happy

    The Farthest

    The Farthest is an excellent documentary on Voyager produced by a friend of mine, Clare Stronge.

    Watch it here - https://youtu.be/1g6uFe3vZE0?si=BIQR-GjLt1E2a4Xh

    1. Francis Boyle

      Re: The Farthest

      Dammit. I'm in Australia and I can't watch it because it's been blocked by "myABC' (as they used to like to call themselves).

  8. DS999 Silver badge
    Pint

    This is why I have visited the Reg for so many years

    You just don't see articles like this elsewhere.

  9. Philo T Farnsworth Bronze badge

    Thanks.

    I definitely needed that.

    As I've commented elsewhere JPL is a national treasure and if they gave out Nobel Prizes for "Cool," they'd get my vote, hands down

  10. Alfie Noakes

    ...and you try to tell the young people of today that!

    "data rate is 1.4 kilobits per second" - WOW!

    Twenty five years ago, Earth based computer modems were not much faster, and yet a machine twice as old, and a gazilion miles away is still successfully chattering.

    That is impressive!

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: ...and you try to tell the young people of today that!

      25 years ago, 56kbps modems were common and xDSL was around a year later in 2000. Cable modems first appeared in, I think 1995, the first DOCIS standards being implemented in 2000 with cable modem speeds up to about 27Mb/s

      As I said to someone else the other day, the 1980's were NOT 25 years ago. You are older than you think! :-)

    2. PB90210 Bronze badge

      Re: ...and you try to tell the young people of today that!

      ITU V.23 (600/1200 bps) dates from 1964

    3. jpennycook

      Re: ...and you try to tell the young people of today that!

      > Twenty five years ago,

      I had cable broadband 25 years ago, and a 56K modem before that. I knew some people with ISDN, and others who used infra-red to couple their devices to their mobiles.

  11. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    There's no arguing with that sentiment!

  12. Herby

    Mel would be proud!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel

    MJST77 and MJSU77 still cooking!

  13. FeRDNYC

    "Well, Voyager 2 is the one that's been flying the longest, and Voyager 1 is the one that's furthest from Earth. So they both have a claim to fame."

    Big "I love all my children equally" energy there.

    I actually spent a semester and a summer off during my junior year of college, working at the JPL. This was back in 1995, and they very shrewdly didn't let me mess with the space systems — I spent half the time in the parallel computing lab, the other half in network security. Great place to work, though.

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