“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
posted by Kattullus at 12:39 PM on April 22
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 [1 favorite]
Absolutely amazing!
posted by hippybear at 12:48 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]
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 [6 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 [6 favorites]
This makes me happier than is probably normal.
posted by marxchivist at 1:02 PM on April 22 [6 favorites]
posted by marxchivist at 1:02 PM on April 22 [6 favorites]
Good to hear from you V'ger, keep in touch!
posted by mazola at 1:32 PM on April 22 [5 favorites]
posted by mazola at 1:32 PM on April 22 [5 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 [23 favorites]
posted by indexy at 1:40 PM on April 22 [23 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 [16 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 [16 favorites]
metafilter: the room full of old nerds
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM on April 22 [24 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 1:49 PM on April 22 [24 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 [14 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 [14 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 [5 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 [5 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 [4 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 [4 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 [2 favorites]
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:33 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
Or the thing pretending to be Voyager 1 is sending us messages….
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:38 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:38 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]
What if V'ger was the software updates we sent all along?
posted by hippybear at 3:11 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:11 PM on April 22 [2 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
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
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 [2 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 [2 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
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
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 [1 favorite]
Now I get to say But not today.
posted by adamrice at 3:56 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]
Or "just this once, everybody lives!"
posted by praemunire at 4:19 PM on April 22
posted by praemunire at 4:19 PM on April 22
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
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
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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 [7 favorites]