this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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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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[–] [email protected] 313 points 10 months ago (15 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 107 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 10 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Wait till it returns as V'ger

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

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 ☺️

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are we sure it isn't YouTube trying to insert an ad?

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[–] [email protected] 137 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Good thing we have cheap labor at your disposal!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Elon, get the fuck up there. Take bozos.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

They should go check out the Titanic first

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I don't blame it for cutting off earth. This place is toxic and self destructive.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Love your name. Greatest band in human history.

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Would you consider someone screaming gibberish at you, communicating?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have complete faith in Captain Janeway.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

It's no secret. Janeway hated having someone on board who could beat her at pool.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago

Thanks, Uncle Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thankfully, NASA is non-profit so they won't ever do that.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

They don't manufacture their equipment.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Shrug, Opportunity is much newer and still lasted about a thousand times longer than its design length.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (16 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago

You know what this means?

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Didn’t I recently read that they were updating its software?

…typical.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why did they install Windows 11?

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago

Forced update, they took too long to restart.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Amazingly old spacecraft is starting to break."

Voyager 1 has had an exceptional service life, the poor old thing is tired.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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”

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (3 children)

When the new intern presses shut down instead of disconnect while connected to the production server

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (3 children)

“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”

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The question then is why the intern has access to the shut down button.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Management got one IT guy managing the whole infrastructure so everyone who needs anything gets domain admin rights

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

A thick layer of delicious cream cheese

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I can't tell if you're joking. That's depressing.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

New communications unit who dis?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Was it something we said?

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