Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth

tomasz@lemmy.sieprawski.pl to Technology@lemmy.world – 622 points – Voyager 1 stops communicating with Earth due to computer issue | CNN
edition.cnn.com

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.

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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.

Same, for a moment I was really concerned. Voyager is like a lifetime achievement for humanity at this point. When it stops communicating its going to be a big loss for the scientific community, and population as a whole. I'm not looking forward to hearing about its loss of functionality in the next decade or so.

Will we ever reach as far again?

I think when we have space based fuel and fabrication infrastructure we'll be able to make some interesting projects, some huge thing that just burns its rockets at full power through the solar system.

Or a very robust probe fired from a giant nuclear cannon on the dark side of the moon. If you start the journey at top speed that cuts out all the acceleration time, we could have stuff popping off in every direction.

I really can't say, I'm not privy to any of the outer solar system projects that might be in the works. Voyager was originally intended to do flyby of the outer planets, and then it headed out of the solar system. I think the trajectory was always designed with the idea that it could exit the solar system. As far as I'm aware, we've done a few missions to asteroids, but nothing that is going out to do flyby of the outer planets. But, I could be wrong, don't take my word for it. All of the stuff I have worked on has been near earth, or pointing away from the earth but still within the vicinity of L1 and L2 Lagrange points.

You'd be surprised how many missions nasa has in the works at any one time.

From ChatGPT just now:

Me: Summarize projects active as of early 2022 involving plans to send objects out of the solar system

ChatGPT (v4) Voyager 1 and 2: Continuing their journey, both launched in the 1970s. They are studying the outer solar system and interstellar space. New Horizons: After its Pluto flyby, it's on an extended mission to explore the Kuiper Belt and beyond.

Pioneer 10 and 11: Although no longer sending data, they continue to travel out of the solar system.

Interstellar Probe Study: A NASA conceptual study for a mission to explore the interstellar medium.

Breakthrough Starshot Initiative: A research and engineering project aiming to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of light sail spacecraft, capable of making the journey to Alpha Centauri.

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Programs: Some concepts under study, such as solar sails and fusion propulsion, could potentially send craft out of the solar system. These projects represent a blend of ongoing missions, conceptual studies, and advanced propulsion research with potential applications for future interstellar travel.

Incidentally, the light sail starshot project is talking about speeds of 0.3c.

I fucking love that project. Heard about it from Neil Tyson.

I don't know if I would consider Voyager to be 'dead' if it stops transmitting.

If I put a message in a bottle, with a blinky light on it, then throw it into the ocean, the message is still there even if the blinky light goes out.

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…?

My point is the title in journalism went from a summary of the story to a confusing false statement that might give you a hint of what the story is about.

In this story the title is clearly saying Voyager has stopped communicating with Earth which is false.

My point is the title in journalism went from a summary of the story to a confusing false statement that might give you a hint of what the story is about.

This is what we get when nobody wants to pay for news anymore. The fact that news media had to turn to ad-funded models is the fault of everybody who refuses to pay for their news

The main issue here isn’t ads. The issue is straight up false titles.

I understand if they opted for vague summary. But false statement is where i draw the line.

And the reason why they have to resort to clickbait titles is to get people on their site for ad views

Clickbait and false statements are two different things.

If I write a title saying “Joe Biden resigned” and then talk about how most Americans wants Joe to resign this is considered a false statement.

But if I write “Americans wants only one thing” then this is a clickbait.

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.)

Am thinking people were mostly worried if rocket explodes during liftoff. Then again people also are completely clueless about radiation in general, especially smokers.

As a smoker: I'm not clueless, I just don't love myself more than the addiction. But I'm getting there, cause breathing "easily" is an under-rated pleasure, when compared to... not breathing that well

It can take time to break the mental stuff before breaking the habit, regardless of understood risk

Now magnets though... I'm at a complete fucking loss

My point is that not many people know that tobacco contains lead-210 and polonium-210. This is why waping is safer, even though it still carries health risks it doesn't have radioactive elements which deposit in your lungs. And it's not a negligible amount of radiation. You'd be safer living next to Chernobyl plant before it was contained than smoking a pack a day. Do yourself a favor and switch to electronic stuff.

One of the main people who raised concern about rockets full of nuclear material exploding above populated areas was mitchio kaku. He certainly has a good few clues about radiation and nuclear physics.

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.

Hm, didn't know about those. Good to hear. RTGs are such a great technology.

It’s gonna be a real pain in the ass to get a tech out there and look at 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.

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.

I didn't quite read it that way, but I can see how someone could read it that way. It does really seem like the probe is having problems with its internals, less than "communication has stopped"

It’s not gibberish. It’s alien for “Sorry, no interstellar science for you”

It's actually just gotten far enough that the data is being rendered at lower fidelity to save resources

They didn't expect us to get sensors outside the heliosphere before winning the game, but players always immediately find crazy and unexpected ways to break your games

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)

Imagine if this were built with tech from today. It would be non-functional right after the warranty.

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!

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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.

Please tell me this is a shitpost.

There are dozens of satellites, and, o' how ironic that I have mistook this for the reachable ones !

Cut me some slack, I have been reading nothing but books about coding for the past year or so, okay !?

But it's the VOYAGER Engelbert!

Wags finger disapprovingly

Lol name me 3 of the core components that make up for the structure of the voyager.

The antennae, the dish and the computing stuff.

You kept the bar too low 😂😂😂

Ho !? I didn't know you had it in you ! 😱

I kind of hoped you would have mentioned any of these: the magnetometer, polarimeter, and the interferometer; or the spectrometer, or the RTG system.

Hehehehehe

The last time I ever read about it was in 3rd grade 😂. So this is definitely the extent of my knowledge 😂😂😂

Cut me some slack, I have been reading nothing but books about coding for the past year or so, okay !?

Books about coding? Could you tell the 00’s I said hi?

Yep, but it will take them 46 years to fix.

Well considering how far it is.. I can only imagine that they are going to let it go due to redundancy. And yet the notion does not escape my mind.

Who knows what solutions we might come up with in the future ?

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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

"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

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

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.

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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

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

Just don’t do deep dives on people’s comment history. It’s only stress.