I'm a software developer myself. It's a really good feeling when you manage to fix troublesome software issues and deploy the fix out to users, but managing to code and deploy a fix for the furthest away human made object must be a next level kind of feeling.
Just "a Guinness record". There's nothing official about it, especially since they went from selling a world record book to selling world records in a book.
I haven't been part of the Hacker community for a decade and a half, but if I was, I'd recommend them for a Def Con award. I'll email the Def Con committee about it. See if they acknowledge it.
@@TheKrispyfort Sorry to rain on your parade, but the RTGs on board the Voyagers will inevitably stop delivering sufficient power to continue operating them a few years from now. You'd know that if you'd actually watched the video.
This is so incredible. There's something almost reminiscent of Wall-E about Voyager- a human built machine trundling along by itself in the vast universe, going places and seeing things humans never have.
One was designed to be replaced within a year or two (manufactured obsolescence). The other was built to last until our civilization gets wiped out or it finds aliens. Whichever comes last.
*With an ENTIRE internet, AND RU-vid... it's not a flex to say you have engine problems for 7 years.* *It sounds like you are lazy and not intellectually curious.*
When Voyagers 1 & 2 were launched, they carried the same sort of hopes that JWST carries in this era. They delivered, same as Ingenuity delivered on Mars. Thank you, scientists and engineers. Thank you educators! That means you, Anton!
@@bluebird3281- in reality, we kind of have. Engineers are engineers... Give them the right specifics, and budget, and they will cook up what you asked. The specifics for Voyager were weight, size, and must work reliably for a couple of decades and be very redundant and modular to try and fix sh•t that may happen. The specifics for cellphones are cost, weight, sizes, look flashy and die - or become frustrating to use - in the six months after the warranty expired. And they follow said specs as well as the Voyager team nailed their own...
It's not true. Fortran is a pretty simple language, if I remember correctly. My dad taught me Fortran when I was like 8-10yo. And I am not a high IQ person. Also all the programmers quit the school. There are 10-12 years old hackers. * I was hacking games since I was like 14-16, when personal computers & games became available. Btw, I believe Fortran was always considered as a high-level kind of "scripting" language. At least relative to Assembler or C/C++. Assembler is just a step above the machine code. C/C++ kind of both & has low level memory manipulation, but also also abrstraction from the low level stuff. I don't know the details, but it seems like a pretty straightforward problem. Maybe in Fortran it's very difficult, but it's simple in C/Assembler... And it depends what is stored on that faulty memory. If it's just data storage, then any kid with programming experience can do that. (* With the basic understanding of memory allocation).
* I guess my point is that you can learn anything in the internet era. Before it was more difficult. Either your father would teach you everything or you have to go to a library & read. Also IQ is very important. My father is an old school engineer. He was in High Voltage Systems & learned programming on his own. He was running a computer center in the 70th. He could read the machine code faster than I can read words. He taught me programming & electrical/plumbing & construction, before I turn 12yo. At 12-14yo he would tell me to fix the stuff around the house like broken electrical outlet, or leaking faucet...
* Btw, In 1995, I was interested in graphic design & web development. I've learned Photoshop & JavaScript on my own. Well, I had to join a Java Users Group online community to get help with JavaScript. But in just 3-6 months, I was answering all the questions the professional Java Developers had. They even gave me some "participation trophy". They all thought that I was some kind of professional Java developer. * And I was just some kid sitting in front of a computer & trying to build a website. But because the internet connection was bad, I had to learn programming. The graphic/video files were too big. So if you are interested, you don't need education. Just because I have no money, I am fixing all the appliances by myself. I've never bought a pre-build computer. I am not highering people to fix my stove or dishwasher.... You learn when you need/want to learn. Higher Education means nothing. * And I am not even a smart guy. I am extremely average. I've met smart people in my life, & they are way better than me. I've met tallents. My dad IQ is probably around 130-140. My mom has a talent & has an Absolute Pitch, but higher level that an Average Absolute Pitch. So if I can do that, pretty much everyone can do that. I have no Talent. And I am not smart. But I can still do all the things I need to do.
The only outlandish thing about that movie is that an advanced machine race was able to learn to read human Latin alphabet, but was unable to remove a bit of space dirt to read the whole word.
@T1Oracle since the Star Trek universe literally has a FTL established with the warp drive technology, I don't see that as a problem. But Voyager pre-alien-upgrades didn't "travel faster than light" per se, it was supposedly sucked into a black hole / wormhole, to explain how it got to the machine planet.
@@m4rvinmartian TL;DR: Modern software ain't built for this shit, and he, however misunderstood, is not actually very far off. To be fair you'd have to have followed extremely good software practices for this to be even close to possible in the modern day, and even then, computers aren't made to swap out memory modules nowadays. Though, doing unsafe operations such as modifying arbitrary memory and disabling memory modules was sort of a strong suit for old machines. It's very likely to have been not that hard, overlooking the absolute tedium that would be awaiting a result from any operation that must be performed on the remote machine. And, even though it probably wasn't the hardest problem ever solved, it is still worth noting that we're moving far away from the kind of hardware level control that makes repair like this possible. To be honest the solution to failure/fault tolerance nowadays is to have redundant machines, rather than redundant pieces, and it's probably not a great one in this instance.
“The chance of finding it in the interstellar void is almost nil.” 🤞🤓 When the RTG is unable to power the sensors, it should be configured to power a periodic, broadband ping.
@@randallpetersen9164 True, back in the days it was a company that you could build a house on... But now a days people in my part of the world will first ask what plane it is they'll be flying with, and if it is a Boeing we skip the flight... Sadly it has come this far in the United States that American quality/labour can not be trusted anymore. And I blame the US government for this, all the trillions they spend on fake wars, genocides and coups could also be invested in their own population.... Much more money should be spend on decent education for young people, because the US is sadly not even in the top 50 anymore globally when it comes to the level of education... And a good education is the first step to achieve something... This is not the fault of the students and kids of course, but of a government that does not subsidize school... The amount of money parents have to pay to get their children a good education is ridiculous, and the reason why so many Americans are so low educated... (Please do not feel offended by these words. It is just a simple ascertainment that everybody who does not live in the US will make. ✌️)
It's the transmit (or PEP) power that is mind blowing. I'm sure they have to make sure that no satellites or aircraft are inside the transmit beam during the uplink. Everything would get fried.
Add the the distance just how small these two craft actually are. They each constitute a tiny point to try to hit or hear. These were made when we were proud to make things better and better. Sadly Corporatism has focused attention in short term accomplishments like quarterly earnings.
I grew up in Central Florida and was in primary school when these probes went up. It was so exciting! We could just barely see rockets launching at Cape Canaveral, from our school, so our teachers would troop us all out to the playground to see such important launches. It was a great time to be alive. So much potential. So much to dream of, to strive for. I love it that we're still getting info from those two brave little human machines.
I learned FORTRAN IV on an IBM 360/370 mainframe with who knows how little RAM running VM. All our jobs were submitted on punch cards through an RJE. Sucked during finals when the RJE overheated and went down. I loved that language!
My Amiga 2000 from 1986 works today. I use it every day. The way computers were made back in the day was much higher quality. So, I am not surprised that Voyager 1 is still going well. Awesome video as always Anton.
It's not necessarily quality. When your wires, traces, transistors, etc. are bigger, a lot more stuff can wear out and it'll keep working. The invidual bits in Voyager's core memory modules are so big, they're actually visible to the naked eye. Modern stuff is getting to the point where a trace in transistor is only dozens of atoms wide. That makes it much more fragile than older hardware. (As long as we make speed the priority. The error correction coding on CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays demonstrates that it's possible to design things to be extremely robust even if it's tiny.)
@@lennysmileyface planned obsolescence is sadly not the only reason we don't overbuild products like we used to, the main reason is mass demand. It's easy to overbuild when it's one-off or a luxury item, less so when it's meant to built in masses.
@@erkinalp You had companies paying engineers to make weaker glass for lightbulbs so they break easier. Companies could make more resilient technology but then they couldn't sell a new iPhone every year.
@@lennysmileyface in case of glass incandescent lighbulbs, weaker glass and weaker material actually makes it more energy efficient (durable filament&durable glass combo is about half as efficient as fragile filament&fragile glass combo; this tradeoff doesn't apply to LED fixtures hence you almost never see that mode of degradation in LED bulbs), purposefully inferior products are much rarer (21st century apple computers are amongst them)
To be fair, your computer is much more complex and has more hardware and software variety involved. I know its meant to be a joke, but I could not hold myself back anymore.
Hard drives? I doubt it... Tape was king and the least complicated option. On Mariner IV to Mars, where the 22nd image was truncated because it ran out of tape, and on the Voyagers... and it was sufficient for the most part. I am 74, so still have this heavenly feeling. What a trip!
Mate of mine traded his HiLux circa Prado. While I didn't have the heart to tell him he was making a mistake (the HiLux had slight damage from an encounter with an immovable object, not of the marsupial kind), I did get a last ride on the venerable chariot on my last visit. Life goes on...
One iconic day in the future we will bring her back and give her a special place in a museum. Well, if we don’t f up. I’m still confident though that this weird crazy civilization somehow overcomes every challenge and strive between the stars.
It should be pointed out that both Voyagers have a hodgepodge of code to work around failed bits in memory, failed sections of tape (on the tape recorders), failed processors. They operate while being held together by the software equivalent of duct tape.
I'm fascinated with the Voyager probes. I can't explain how I feel - maybe "awe" or "loneliness" - when I imagine them traveling alone through the void, relaying info back to Earth.
I was 12 years old when Voyager 1 launched. That was quite a long time ago and even I am feeling the age now. Carl Sagan made me really appreciate especially the Voyager space crafts and the importance of space exploration. It absolutely blows my mind how great the people behind it were and is, being able to keep it going for such a long time in the harshest possible environment outside the heliosphere.
based on the headline only, we should more often call nasa out "you cant" - "you forgot" - "your not brave enough" or "a chicken" back to the future **** 🤣
Honestly this has to be one of the greatest achievements of the NASA engineering team ever. As an infrastructure guy, in IT, somebody telling me this is my project is so mind bogglingly complicated... I cannot begin to emphasize how crazy this fix is. And I'm not even talking about the software engineering... NASA, you guys are the absolute Legends.
Voyagers not only are *the* longest lived/most successful missions but they're also roughly my age so yhey hold a special place in my ❤. I'll genuinely be sad when they "die" 😢 (even though I know it's silly to anthroporphize machines)
In my 9th grade science class voyager was passing Saturn and I distinctly remember an answer to one of the test questions was that some of the rings were "braided".
Voyager 1 is now timeless. The time we measure that it takes to reach another intelligence doesn't really matter. Other means of measuring time will account for its voyage. None of us will be here to say how long it took. That's the best part. We already did our part in its mission. Bon voyage V1.
We should build something that flies faster, and just slingshot it after Voyager, catch up to Voyager, and then have it maybe supply more power to Voyager or something. I hesitate to say repair, but maybe attach itself to Voyager and connect to it. Dream one can .
I read somewhere that they could upload new software to the Voyager and discovered that a specific memory location had failed and that they learned to program around that particular memory cell. The complete program for Voyager was re-written and uploaded several times. At least when it was closer
I was 25 when it launched. I was taking an astronomy class and Dr. Rita Beebe came in for a lecture just after we got the pictures of the volcano on Io. What a rush! That Voyager 1 is still going and we fixed it ... what a rush!
It's kind of insane to think how far away Voyager 1 currently is by human standards. It's beyond the heliosphere and technically in interstellar space. Voyager 1 is the most distant manmade object in space.
I'm not an astrophysicist, but I am a computer scientist, and it makes me very happy that the FDS is back up and running. I know it's just a machine, but something about that little, ancient computer still chugging along at 15 billion miles away, still being uniquely important and useful, puts a smile on my face. Also, I'd encourage people try out FORTRAN, it's actually a pretty nifty programming language.
NASA included instructions on how to make a record player that, although crude, would certainly work. They even told (to whom it may concern) how long each side of the record would play
Let's appreciate the fact that this was probably only possible because of how old the technology is. You can't just "poke" stuff anymore, everything is memory protected and overly complicated now.
@@awesomedavid2012 Why would it suddenly go up in the Oort Cloud? And well, by the time it reaches it it will no longer have any power. Although i think it would've been fine, but by the time it reaches it other things may also break.
So happy they resurrected Voyager I. The JPL team needs to be walking on water right now. They have a complicated something monumental, on an iconic mission.
I still recall reading about the opportunity to do the "Grand Tour" of the planets that would become possible some time in the next decade. This was in middle school in the Apollo glory years.
all your true fans know that science and what we think we know is constantly changing. thank you for everything you do. your videos are one of the most positive and uplifting aspects of my life!
"Ok NASA, we have no energy, no storage memory, broken hardware, no repairs, no direct contact, limited communication..." NASA: "yes, but you wanted to tell me about the problem.."
Incredible to fathom the skill and intelligence of those engineers who built and programmed this vehicle from discrete components using sliderules and punch card computing. Same goes for the the Appolo 11 mission. There is just a whole other level of competence with these geniuses.
Just thinking about how technology has changed in 47 years it is amazing we are still teaching engineers how to fix Voyager. Such a crazy thing to come home and talk about at the dinner table. "What you'd do at work today babe?" "Oh, nothing much just rebooted Voyager 163 AU's away from us. We ate some lucky peanuts and some donuts and then i came home." What amazing job to have.
Current best and brightest minds on AI should be put to work on next set of Voyager probes with new sets of sensors to further the work of their predecessors. We owe it to humanity.
@@matt47110815 then as a legacy to the passing of a voyager team engineering mission expect let's get the next generation to work along side the mission vets and be trained up so in time they can harness the experience of the voyager team let it be a every brighter beacon of hope and resourcefulness show people you can work on problem's and find solutions together all humankind . That is the best legacy most of all against elements in today's world who would turn our world into a dark place. Let voyager be the start of something special :)
When these guys walked out of that conference room they had to have walked out in slow motion. There were hair flicks and chairs roughly pushed out of the way. These are the last of the steely eyed space engineers. They should get all the prizes.
It's amazing that they got it working again! I think it's sad knowing voyager 1 will shut down eventually, but I'm also getting excited. We're in an age where space flight is becoming much cheaper, potentially enough that people will be able to attempt a more dedicated interstellar probe.
We should do Voyager 3,using Voyager 1 and 2 designs as a base, but equipping them with more memory, faster engines and bigger power supply to specifically make it an interstellar mission.
Never forget this little guy when you feel lonely or sad... Voyager is gonna be there for so long!! Golden Disc can shower down on whoever it pleases 😅
When I was a kid, I didn't appreciate how special the hi-def pictures of the gas giants were, or how new they still were, or how lucky we were that NASA got approval for funding those missions. Voyagers 1&2 hold a special place in my heart. I'm glad they're still working.
thanks, Anton! ive never heard the v1 problem/solution explained like that, and now it makes sense. you ARE one of the best science communicators...Stay Wonderful, Buddy!
Every person involved in accomplishing this are officially legends. Their names will be in historybooks and what they did here told to every child on earth in school. True heroes!
