“members of the Voyager flight team celebrate”
April 22, 2024 12:24 PM Subscribe
NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth reports NASA. After pinpointing the issue with the space probe, the mission team have devised a workaround. Previously, previouslier, many more previouslies.
Sounds worthy of an article in Scientific American similar to ENGINEERING VOYAGER 2'S ENCOUNTER WITH URANUS (November 1986).
posted by neuron at 12:37 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
posted by neuron at 12:37 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
I’d watch a movie about this. Heck, I’d watch a TV miniseries.
posted by Kattullus at 12:39 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
posted by Kattullus at 12:39 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
Fuckin' SCIENCE, yo. Amazing!
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:42 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:42 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
HOW??? HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE????
Absolutely amazing!
posted by hippybear at 12:48 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
Absolutely amazing!
posted by hippybear at 12:48 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
I said in one of the previouslies that it was too soon to write Voyager's obituary.
It's not over until the team says it's over, and they pack up and stop trying.
posted by tclark at 12:54 PM on April 22 [13 favorites]
It's not over until the team says it's over, and they pack up and stop trying.
posted by tclark at 12:54 PM on April 22 [13 favorites]
This makes me happier than is probably normal.
posted by marxchivist at 1:02 PM on April 22 [9 favorites]
posted by marxchivist at 1:02 PM on April 22 [9 favorites]
Good to hear from you V'ger, keep in touch!
posted by mazola at 1:32 PM on April 22 [8 favorites]
posted by mazola at 1:32 PM on April 22 [8 favorites]
This is as badass as computer engineering gets. Programming a nearly 50 year old 64k computer that's outside the solar system with a lag time of almost a day. Simply amazing.
posted by indexy at 1:40 PM on April 22 [48 favorites]
posted by indexy at 1:40 PM on April 22 [48 favorites]
Look at the median age of the people in that room. It does my ancient heart good. It's like a COBOL conference in there.
"Sir, we have a problem with one of the computers."
"So fix it."
"Well it's 47 years old, and it only has 68K of memory and nobody really knows how to program these systems anymore and --"
"What? Why are we still using that ancient crap! Can't we replace it with something all shiny and new with AI and VR and GPUs and a bunch of other other acronyms??"
"Well, not right now. It's 15 billion miles away. . . ."
"Ah. Convene the room full of old nerds!!"
posted by The Bellman at 1:48 PM on April 22 [33 favorites]
"Sir, we have a problem with one of the computers."
"So fix it."
"Well it's 47 years old, and it only has 68K of memory and nobody really knows how to program these systems anymore and --"
"What? Why are we still using that ancient crap! Can't we replace it with something all shiny and new with AI and VR and GPUs and a bunch of other other acronyms??"
"Well, not right now. It's 15 billion miles away. . . ."
"Ah. Convene the room full of old nerds!!"
posted by The Bellman at 1:48 PM on April 22 [33 favorites]
MetaFilter: the room full of old nerds
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM on April 22 [53 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM on April 22 [53 favorites]
Developers sometimes talk or brag or pride themselves about working "close to the metal" but there is no software engineering team in the world who are simultaneously as close to and as far away from the metal as the people keeping Voyager operational.
Hotpatching code in specific regions of a near-50-year old memory core to work around a failure in a device 25 billion kilometers away? Incomprehensible.
posted by mhoye at 2:20 PM on April 22 [33 favorites]
Hotpatching code in specific regions of a near-50-year old memory core to work around a failure in a device 25 billion kilometers away? Incomprehensible.
posted by mhoye at 2:20 PM on April 22 [33 favorites]
I’d watch a movie about this. Heck, I’d watch a TV miniseries.
In all seriousness this should be a public lecture series, or a graduate level class.
posted by mhoye at 2:20 PM on April 22 [10 favorites]
In all seriousness this should be a public lecture series, or a graduate level class.
posted by mhoye at 2:20 PM on April 22 [10 favorites]
Two thoughts:
1) Voyager still has a very good chance of outliving all the people working on it...
2) Maybe we should start adding a few extra chips to anything we send out, maybe a lil' bit of intentionally empty memory, just in case?
posted by caution live frogs at 2:30 PM on April 22 [5 favorites]
1) Voyager still has a very good chance of outliving all the people working on it...
2) Maybe we should start adding a few extra chips to anything we send out, maybe a lil' bit of intentionally empty memory, just in case?
posted by caution live frogs at 2:30 PM on April 22 [5 favorites]
One of my least favorite things to troubleshoot is bugs that only exist on the remote build machine. Even if I disable everything except the affected portion of the build/test, it still takes a few minutes to spin up the VM to test a change. I can't imagine having the patience to wait 45 hours to see if a build passed or not, and god forbid you forget a semicolon!
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:33 PM on April 22 [6 favorites]
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:33 PM on April 22 [6 favorites]
Or the thing pretending to be Voyager 1 is sending us messages….
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:38 PM on April 22 [18 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:38 PM on April 22 [18 favorites]
What if V'ger was the software updates we sent all along?
posted by hippybear at 3:11 PM on April 22 [9 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:11 PM on April 22 [9 favorites]
I do know I plan on holding this over my ISP the next time things go down.
Actually, I keed about that. I have to give our ISP props, because we had a problem right before New Years, and it was at the pole, and we were told on Friday that they'd be out on Tuesday to fix the problem, and that was going to be a gigantic bummer. But surprise, about 2 hours later they had a truck out here and they got us fixed before the long holiday weekend.
So yes, computer engineering at solar system levels is amazing. And so is our ISP, so props to them.
posted by hippybear at 3:27 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]
Actually, I keed about that. I have to give our ISP props, because we had a problem right before New Years, and it was at the pole, and we were told on Friday that they'd be out on Tuesday to fix the problem, and that was going to be a gigantic bummer. But surprise, about 2 hours later they had a truck out here and they got us fixed before the long holiday weekend.
So yes, computer engineering at solar system levels is amazing. And so is our ISP, so props to them.
posted by hippybear at 3:27 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]
we had a problem right before New Years, and it was at the pole, and we were told on Friday that they'd be out on Tuesday to fix the problem
The North Pole? Because if not, I think you have the right to expect more from your ISP.
posted by The Bellman at 3:33 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]
The North Pole? Because if not, I think you have the right to expect more from your ISP.
posted by The Bellman at 3:33 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]
Heck, I’d watch a TV miniseries.
Soap opera. We're going to need to swap out actors every decade or so while the actual engineers carry on in the same roles.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 3:38 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
Soap opera. We're going to need to swap out actors every decade or so while the actual engineers carry on in the same roles.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 3:38 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
Because if not, I think you have the right to expect more from your ISP.
We'd been using a cell phone as a 5G hotspot for a couple of days, so this is a case where "underpromise and overdeliver" basically earned them Gold Level Standing in our hearts for a long while.
posted by hippybear at 3:43 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]
We'd been using a cell phone as a 5G hotspot for a couple of days, so this is a case where "underpromise and overdeliver" basically earned them Gold Level Standing in our hearts for a long while.
posted by hippybear at 3:43 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]
Just yesterday, I was reminded of this moving post on Crooked Timber: Death, Lonely Death.
Now I get to say But not today.
posted by adamrice at 3:56 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]
Now I get to say But not today.
posted by adamrice at 3:56 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]
Or "just this once, everybody lives!"
posted by praemunire at 4:19 PM on April 22 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 4:19 PM on April 22 [6 favorites]
Keep going Voyager!
Mind boggling work.
Like watching Apollo 13. How did they do that?
posted by Windopaene at 4:58 PM on April 22
Mind boggling work.
Like watching Apollo 13. How did they do that?
posted by Windopaene at 4:58 PM on April 22
Dr. McCoy: [about Nomad] Jim, I don't think there is anybody in there.
Nomad: I contain no parasitical beings. I am Nomad.
Scott: In *my* opinion, that's a machine.
posted by clavdivs at 5:06 PM on April 22 [5 favorites]
Nomad: I contain no parasitical beings. I am Nomad.
Scott: In *my* opinion, that's a machine.
posted by clavdivs at 5:06 PM on April 22 [5 favorites]
Maybe we should start adding a few extra chips to anything we send out, maybe a lil' bit of intentionally empty memory, just in case?
I don't know the deets, but I'm guessing there is plenty of dead code space given that there are no more planetary flybys and most of the science instruments are turned off. And if they ever had any free code memory, they probably used it up between Saturn and Uranus when they upgraded to Reed-Solomon encoding.
The Voyagers were pretty much upgraded from the get-go -- despite Congress and the NASA Admin officially killing off the Grand Tour concept they were beefed up with things like extra RTGs so they would last past Saturn.
Ironically, one of the things that they did not have budget for was called the STAR (Self-Testing And Repairing) Computer, idk whether it would have helped here.
posted by credulous at 6:29 PM on April 22 [5 favorites]
I don't know the deets, but I'm guessing there is plenty of dead code space given that there are no more planetary flybys and most of the science instruments are turned off. And if they ever had any free code memory, they probably used it up between Saturn and Uranus when they upgraded to Reed-Solomon encoding.
The Voyagers were pretty much upgraded from the get-go -- despite Congress and the NASA Admin officially killing off the Grand Tour concept they were beefed up with things like extra RTGs so they would last past Saturn.
Ironically, one of the things that they did not have budget for was called the STAR (Self-Testing And Repairing) Computer, idk whether it would have helped here.
posted by credulous at 6:29 PM on April 22 [5 favorites]
Fuckin' SCIENCE, yo. Amazing!
The science is pretty amazing, but this story has not been primarily about the science but about the engineering.
Voyager's compute machinery looks comically primitive compared to anything in commercial use today, but the flip side of that is that unlike any modern system, Voyager's computers are simple enough for a single human mind to comprehend in their entirety. Packing all the functionality that Voyager has into machinery as simple as that while keeping it all reconfigurable enough to allow for the kind of patch fixes they're currently doing is a massive engineering achievement.
Maybe we should start adding a few extra chips to anything we send out, maybe a lil' bit of intentionally empty memory, just in case?
Voyager has way more than a few redundant chips. It has entire redundant subsystems.
posted by flabdablet at 6:36 PM on April 22 [10 favorites]
The science is pretty amazing, but this story has not been primarily about the science but about the engineering.
Voyager's compute machinery looks comically primitive compared to anything in commercial use today, but the flip side of that is that unlike any modern system, Voyager's computers are simple enough for a single human mind to comprehend in their entirety. Packing all the functionality that Voyager has into machinery as simple as that while keeping it all reconfigurable enough to allow for the kind of patch fixes they're currently doing is a massive engineering achievement.
Maybe we should start adding a few extra chips to anything we send out, maybe a lil' bit of intentionally empty memory, just in case?
Voyager has way more than a few redundant chips. It has entire redundant subsystems.
posted by flabdablet at 6:36 PM on April 22 [10 favorites]
What an astounding ongoing achievement. I'm so glad that they've got it back.
posted by nfalkner at 6:47 PM on April 22
posted by nfalkner at 6:47 PM on April 22
What an amazing epic, unfolding across decades and billions of miles. 69.63kb of memory versus all that limitless time and space? Yes, sign me up for the soap opera.
posted by abraxasaxarba at 8:31 PM on April 22
posted by abraxasaxarba at 8:31 PM on April 22
The right writers' room could actually make that work even across the decades.
posted by hippybear at 9:04 PM on April 22
posted by hippybear at 9:04 PM on April 22
The original software for the Voyager probes was written using Fortran 5 then ported to Fortran 77, and today there is some porting in C.
posted by meehawl at 9:24 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
posted by meehawl at 9:24 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
This is both fantastic and amazing news all at once. But I'm not all that surprised. I do wonder, though, how we get a 46-year-old spacecraft to keep working but any electronic device here on Earth is lucky to survive a 12-month warranty.
Programming a nearly 50 year old 64k computer that's outside the solar system with a lag time of almost a day. Simply amazing.
The lag is almost TWO days - 22.5 hours each way. Imagine pressing a key on your keyboard on Monday and seeing the character appear on your screen on Wednesday. THe way I type, I'd then have to press backspace, then wait until Friday before I could press another key.
posted by dg at 11:49 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]
Programming a nearly 50 year old 64k computer that's outside the solar system with a lag time of almost a day. Simply amazing.
The lag is almost TWO days - 22.5 hours each way. Imagine pressing a key on your keyboard on Monday and seeing the character appear on your screen on Wednesday. THe way I type, I'd then have to press backspace, then wait until Friday before I could press another key.
posted by dg at 11:49 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]
I do wonder, though, how we get a 46-year-old spacecraft to keep working but any electronic device here on Earth is lucky to survive a 12-month warranty.
There's a 1979-vintage Apple II+ in my shed that's never been serviced* and still works.
*I know this for sure as I've owned it since new.
posted by flabdablet at 12:54 AM on April 23 [5 favorites]
There's a 1979-vintage Apple II+ in my shed that's never been serviced* and still works.
*I know this for sure as I've owned it since new.
posted by flabdablet at 12:54 AM on April 23 [5 favorites]
There's a certain craft and joy in understanding your hardware and software top to bottom. What a great piece of work.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:40 AM on April 23 [2 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:40 AM on April 23 [2 favorites]
My Apple ][ has suffered a couple of maladies in its long life: a failed power supply (probably a bad capacitor) and a bad DRAM chip.
Voyager 2 also suffered a failed capacitor, resulting in radio receiver degradation. And this recent memory failure involved a different technology (CMOS static RAM vs NMOS dynamic RAM) but not far removed from what was available commercially, except for a lot more radiation shielding.
The Voyagers don't have to worry about power glitches corrupting RAM, due to a system described in NASA's Computers in Spaceflight (one of their many history publications toward which I would love to throw more tax dollars):
Voyager's primary electricity is alternating current. The radioisotope generators produce direct current, which is converted. By running a separate power line from the direct current bus fed by the generators to the CMOS memories, the only way power would be lost is if a major catastrophe destroyed the generators. If that happened there would not be any need for a data computer anyway.
posted by credulous at 12:07 PM on April 23 [2 favorites]
Voyager 2 also suffered a failed capacitor, resulting in radio receiver degradation. And this recent memory failure involved a different technology (CMOS static RAM vs NMOS dynamic RAM) but not far removed from what was available commercially, except for a lot more radiation shielding.
The Voyagers don't have to worry about power glitches corrupting RAM, due to a system described in NASA's Computers in Spaceflight (one of their many history publications toward which I would love to throw more tax dollars):
Voyager's primary electricity is alternating current. The radioisotope generators produce direct current, which is converted. By running a separate power line from the direct current bus fed by the generators to the CMOS memories, the only way power would be lost is if a major catastrophe destroyed the generators. If that happened there would not be any need for a data computer anyway.
posted by credulous at 12:07 PM on April 23 [2 favorites]
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And I want to celebrate the sheer glory of these lines:
"Launched over 46 years ago, the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune."
posted by doctornemo at 12:37 PM on April 22 [12 favorites]