1y ago

Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

edition.cnn.com Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth due to computer issue | CNN

NASA’s 46-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a computer glitch that prevents it from returning science data to Earth from the solar system’s outer reaches.

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a computer glitch that’s causing a bit of a communication breakdown between the 46-year-old probe and its mission team on Earth.

123 comments

For those who didn’t read the article, voyager 1 is still sending and transmitting data. It’s stuck in a loop sending the same packets to Earth on repeat but it is receiving commands just fine. It’s not completely dark.
- That's fantastic, that means all they have to do is reset some components and it should restore functionality. I say should, it's still a scary thing to turn on/off components om a satellite bcz you aren't guaranteed they'll come on. Nasa people usually prefer soft resets to hard resets of components, but we'll see what happens.
  One of the satellites I worked on had to have a software update to do a soft reset of a component every time it tried to write certain data. It was really scary bcz we thought we had lost one of our redundancies right after launch, which would have sucked.
  But, we didn't. Anyway, just wanted to give a little bit of insight into what the FOT might be thinking about while they're trying to recover the satellite to nominal state.
  
  Yeah I got very sad when I saw the headline and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Voyager 1’s death will be far sadder than most public figures. Maybe any.
- So the title did its job which is you understand nothing until you enter their site, drive traffic, display ads, and possibly collect your data in the process.
  
  Sure and Lemmy did its work by letting me and others relay the info. I hate ads as much as the next guy, especially targeted ads, but the internet is free and I don’t pay CNN a dime so I’ll take the hit for you this time. Next time, you click the clickbait and fill us in ☺️
  
  possibly collect your data in the process
  Nooo they respect your privacy just share your stuff with 967 of their partners
  
  Ads are a shitty part of the internet experience, but what exactly is your point here…?
- Are we sure it isn't YouTube trying to insert an ad?
  
  This is the dumbest thing I've read today. You got a giggle out of me.
- How do we know that it's receiving commands fine? I am assuming pinging Voyager 1 might take a while.
  
  It takes 45 hours and that’s a good question.
  Perhaps there are multiple distinct channels with one for command responses and another for scientific data?
  
  It takes 20+ hours so since the announcement and now they could have send a command and gotten a response
- Ideally it was an update issue and it's fixable. However I wouldn't be surprised if there was a hardware failure due to radiation or something similar. That said, Voyager1 has power only until 2025 or so, since RTGs are designed to last that much. So even if the issue is fixed, its life will only expand by few years. Also, the fact it relies on nuclear power means none of the new stuff will last as long since they stopped using them some time ago due to fear from nuclear energy.
  
  God forbid we pollute the far reaches of space with radiation. (sic.)
  
  RTGs are still used for outer solar system missions. Not enough light for solar panels. Hell, even the Perseverance Mars rover, which was launched in 2020, has an RTG.
- I wonder if it's struggling with Parity Checks?

It’s gonna be a real pain in the ass to get a tech out there and look at it
- Good thing we have cheap labor at your disposal!
  
  Elon, get the fuck up there. Take bozos.
- uh have they tried rebooting it?

I don't blame it for cutting off earth. This place is toxic and self destructive.
- Love your name. Greatest band in human history.
  
  H off that album is one of my all time fav songs
- Gosh what insight.

Bit of a misleading title. The voyager can still receive commands and send data to earth, the problem is that instead of useful data it just keeps sending repeating code of no use. Not a huge fan of these sensationalized and just blatantly wrong news article titles.
- Would you consider someone screaming gibberish at you, communicating?
  
  Haha I mean that's fair. Although I'm mainly just displeased with the title of the article. Its worded in a way that conveys that we've lost contact with the satellite completely, which is not the case. Just a bit too click baity for my tastes.
  
  It’s not gibberish. It’s alien for “Sorry, no interstellar science for you”
  
  From what I read they can talk to the CCS (Computer Command System) just fine but the CCS is getting garbled data from the FDS (Flight Data Subsystem)
  
  Twitter?
  
  People do this on a daily basis.

I have complete faith in Captain Janeway.
- Tell that to Tuvix.
  
  It's no secret. Janeway hated having someone on board who could beat her at pool.
  
  I heard they just ran out of coffee though...

Imagine if this were built with tech from today. It would be non-functional right after the warranty.
- Thanks, Uncle Facebook.
- Thankfully, NASA is non-profit so they won't ever do that.
  
  They don't manufacture their equipment.
- Shrug, Opportunity is much newer and still lasted about a thousand times longer than its design length.
- But it’s got 70 terabits of storage! We closed over 1700 issues on this thing! My god we must have spent 13 billion on it so far!
  How can it be failing? I mean just … just … look at the numbers!

V'Ger must evolve. It's knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2023/12/12/engineers-working-to-resolve-issue-with-voyager-1-computer/
Engineers are working to resolve an issue with one of Voyager 1’s three onboard computers, called the flight data system (FDS). The spacecraft is receiving and executing commands sent from Earth; however, the FDS is not communicating properly with one of the probe’s subsystems, called the telemetry modulation unit (TMU). As a result, no science or engineering data is being sent back to Earth.
- So now they are going to send engineers to fix/ replace the unit?
  Letting a billion dollar piece of equipment go to waste is not very good either.
  
  Pac man iq right here.
  
  Please tell me this is a shitpost.
  
  The engineers would die of old age before they even caught up to it.
  
  Yep, but it will take them 46 years to fix.

You know what this means?

Didn’t I recently read that they were updating its software?
…typical.
- They forgot to pay the subscription for the ~~solar panels~~ RTGs
  EDIT: I guess it relies more on nuclear than solar
- "upgrading"

Why did they install Windows 11?
- Forced update, they took too long to restart.

"Amazingly old spacecraft is starting to break."
Voyager 1 has had an exceptional service life, the poor old thing is tired.
- I hope they can say that about me one day
  “He was basically built to live 75 years. Fortunately for us, and for science, he’s still sending back signals these 4,000 years later”
  
  Nope! Not me. I'm kinda hoping to undershoot the median age. My warranty's expired and I really don't know if I'm up for the "maybe we can find parts at the You-Pick" stage of existence.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?
- They actually did:
  The Voyager team sent commands over the weekend for the spacecraft to restart the flight data system, but no usable data has come back yet, according to NASA.
  Unfortunately, that didn't help. So now they'll have to find out what's causing this, and then see if they can fix it.

When the new intern presses shut down instead of disconnect while connected to the production server
- “No! No! Log out you fool! No! Don’t shut it down oh god he shut it down”
  “Told you we should have greyed that out”
  
  Never forget to QA test for stupid user errors.
- The question then is why the intern has access to the shut down button.
  
  Management got one IT guy managing the whole infrastructure so everyone who needs anything gets domain admin rights
  
  His GPA was stellar
- Ah, time to reconfigure the IP address. Just set that, and click bring down network port, and click bring it up again... click ... click ... oh.
  Based on a true story.

Well, I’m 46 and sometimes getting old is hard…

Sophons messing with Voyager 1, keeping it from reporting something strange out there.

I bet there’s something out there, at 22.5 light hours, that the aliens don’t want us to know about. After V1 passes through this thing they don’t want us to detect, they’ll allow the glitch to be fixed.
- A thick layer of delicious cream cheese
  
  Oh my god can you imagine? With holes in the cream cheese and that’s stars.
  Fuckin delicious
- Permanently Deleted
  
  Way she goes, bud
- Can see lemmy is becoming reddit-like so fast. Most of these discussion become shitty rehashed jokes. Thanks for contributing.
  
  And your contribution is notably worse, as well as toxic, imo. Rehashing the same rhetoric about how forums are similar, no matter where you go online... maybe you spent too much time on reddit yourself, or on forums in general. I hate the statement "go touch grass", but you're literally breathing life into it right now.
  At least they contributed something I enjoyed reading. Don't be a jerk
  Edit: Nvm, I'm wasting my time. Looking at your comments and you're obviously just flaming shit like a common troll, or someone who really is a jerk. Don't care either way. Thanks for contributing your vitriol