My wife spent years building the scientific central control modules for both the voyager 1&2; some parts of it on the dining room table,she would get so angry when the updates were made and she had to take what she had done apart to add the change’s into it,it was all hand wired and components,her dna is all inside,good to hear her accomplishments are still working as it travels through the cosmos,she passed in 2020, but her legacy travels on.
Unreal story. Things were not quite as hi-tech in those days, we learn from Jeff Dunnell. Thank god the Soviets didn't know the space race was partially won on American dinner tables....Voyager was a such a BIG DEAL back then. After all the preparation and frustration, you both must have been proud of her contribution.
Hats off to the engineers of the 1970s who, with limited computing power, crafted this extraordinary engineering marvel. They designed a durable and well-equipped piece of hardware that has provided us with profound insights into our home and our place in the universe. Voyager 1 stands as a testament to their ingenuity and foresight. It continues to send data back to Earth from the edge of the solar system, over 40 years later. The mission has expanded our understanding of planetary science, space environments, and even the outer reaches of our solar system. The dedication and brilliance of those engineers have had a lasting impact on space exploration and our knowledge of our home and place in this universe. Nuclear powered Satellites for the win!!!
I met a man who was one of the lead engineers who designed the Voyager computer system. He started a computer company outside of Boston called Sequoia. We had one of his computers in our office and warehouse, it ran for 13 years and never stopped for one second, because of its secondary systems, and a parallel bus. I went to Boston to learn to work on this computer, it was quite the experience.
.. I was 27 when Voyager 1 was launched, I'm now 74...My wife and I were on Vacation at Coco Beach at the time and witnessed the launch...I would have never guessed, 47 years later, it would still be "talking" to us 😎 What a marvelous feat of engendering...My oldest grandson is a Python software engineer working for SpaceX... He received his Ph.D in Aerospace Engineering from Ga Tech...He is without doubt, a remarkable young man 😊
That is great moment Sir , you have connection with this probe at interstella space. I hope it can still be guided to escape the galaxy in future. See what nuclear isotipe power source can do.
I was 7 and I feel the same way. I was glued to the television when the launch was broadcast. As far as launches live I was there for the Cassinni launch and a few space shuttle ones as well. I am toying with the idea of having Voyager Cassini and Juno etched on my tombstone for when I die😂. Greetings fellow space geek🤙🤙🤸🤸💖💖
@MichaelVumile-jb3lb voyager 1 is traveling at the escape velocity of our solar system which is around 17 km/s. In order to achieve escape velocity of the Milky Way and get beyond its gravitational influence is almost 550 km/s. It used the gravity of the largest planets in our solar system to achieve that speed. Maybe it can use a Red Giant or a black hole to slingshot out of the galaxy at that speed? Who knows but it's fun to think about 🤯
@@moondra3481 😛I'm hopelessly hooked on anything "space" !! I have also witnessed several shuttle launches along with Falcon 9. The most incredible I've ever seen was December 15, 2015 when the Falcon 9 booster landed at the cape!! Truly unbelievable...it's quite a rush...you owe it to yourself to go see this !!
They Voyager has simple IC's in them mostly simple TTL Logic. It was probably some early CMOS memory in the FDS that failed so they just remapped the memory address
I find it stunning that Voyager has the flexibility to relocate software within it to bypass malfunctioning hardware. That's impresive enough in MODERN hardware, and this is ANCIENT by computer standards.
I reakon they analysed the software and worked out there were some dud memory locations, so they re-assembled the code not to have any code in the damaged area, and uploaded the new program, so not that amazing. However working out what memory locations were damaged must have been difficult.
@@petergarrone8242 They had a long time to figure out this hack, but they did it. Awesome story, really. Outstanding success that sadly won't get a lot of attention.
Billions of years in the future, an alien spacecraft will capture one of the Voyagers and they will be amazed to learn that on the other side of the galaxy there was a technological civilization capable of building this machine that has long since disappeared.
Wait till A.I. takes over... humans will be a small blip in the history of time and space. The precursor to what awaits... The civilization that finds them will most likely be just like the robots we are building to replace humanity as we know it now. Evolution never rests. We are our own worst enemies. But for that moment in what we call time, we achieved the impossible compared to those who come before us. We're all doomed!
I remember when these 2 were launched.....at that time NOBODY would have believed that they would still be functional almost 50 YEARS later......the fact that the signals can be resolved beyond the background noise is amazing to me....someone, years ago, likened it to being able to see a 40w light bulb on the moon....amazing. TRULY.
Isn't that why they had to cut back power and prioritize certain instruments? The power supply keeps getting weaker, though frankly any battery that lasts this long is a marvel of engineering.
would be interesting to see how improvements in the deep space network ,esp Rxrs, was able to keep up with the increasingly faint signals from voyager?
The fact that every engineer who worked on Voyager is either dead or very much retired is a testament to the current set of engineers that currently maintain it.
It probably means these current guys are the ultimate Pawtucket B-Team. However, it's our darling VGER, and we love the NASA nerds that made this happen.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Ben Franklin, and the endurance of our society to sustain the fine work of all involved. We get some things right, let's keep trying.
I wonder how valuable is the transmitted data being received from the primitive sensors from way back when. But you gotta love the effort to keep Voyager on the road. Mazaltov, NASA.
Uhh so much fluff and little details. The voyagers were supposed to be short on power and so could only run one or two scientific instruments until it/they can't run any very soon. How in the world did it get more wattage from its aging decaying nuclear reactor to run all instruments again? Was this script totally A.I. generated and not fact checked?
Voyager 1 @ 2 are my favorite two spacecraft besides the sevice module and lunar module and the saturn 5 , its just and awesome story and mission thats still going on since the 70z and was only supposed to be a 5 yr mission
I think the odds for that happening were so close to zero that it wouldn't have made sense to worry about them. Space is almost completely empty. Even an interstellar gas cloud is a better approximation to being a complete vacuum than anything achievable on Earth.
It is beyond impressive how long Voyager 1 has lasted! What an amazing job the engineers did back them and how fantastic they still to this day have managed to revive and keep it alive! Brilliant men and women!
What I love about informative channels is that they provide interesting information for free, accompanied by great images, and after reading the comments, I get to know what other viewers think, which helps me. think better. Thank you everyone :P
TLDR: voyager signal restored. Nothing else was explained in any kind of detail. Not how nor what we recieved, nothing. Just that and 9m and 25s of filler of history. “Full update” that could be fit within single line of text on youtube community post bloated into 10 minute video.
Every piece if space hardware has a low level boot loader with backup. One of the first things it does (if it has sufficient power) is say "Hello earth. Do you have new instructions for me?". It can wait a looooooong time for a yes no then resetting and checking alignment to Earth. Thus its a slow process as it may wait days before a response. Meanwhile its continuing its secondary programming (collect and transmit science data in voyagers case) This simple multi redundant and bullet proofed ROM that cannot be overwritten is at the heart of every system. (Thus also preventing hacking attempts permenantly bricking a satellite once the heartbeat dies.) Voyager will die when 1) its nuclear source dies. 2) boot loader fails 3) radio fails 4) micro meteorite+ takes it out. 5) runs out of propellant to align itself. 6) self healing systems fail Its a miracle its lasted this long. But im grateful! Even if she just sends back a heart beat saying "hey im here" we can get useful data on speed which might lead to insights about gravity, or drag (density) or intersteller winds. That said the Enigneers at NASA deserve a standing applause for diagnosing what memory core item failed and knowing how to bypass it. Congrats to all those involved. You deserve praise for your diligence to this grand old bird.
Wonderful news! Well done to the engineering team at NASA in getting this little sweetheart running on all cylinders once again. I just about remember watching Voyager 1's launch on TV when I was 10 years old, and was devastated when it seemed the craft's systems were beginning to fail. Thank goodness these exceptionally clever people could find a way to fix the problem, and I hope Voyager continues to exceed all our expectations.
The entire Voyager team looks like me, about to collect social security. 😆 I remember when this (and V2) was launched. I still get "that feeling." Oregon Trail needs to still be on board. Just saying. 😄 Let's hope the up-and-coming youngsters learn the programming languages of yore. Going to need those moving forward. ❤❤
@@jamesdellaneve9005 Well then that would make it even more difficult to find a programmer from that time. Which they had to do regardless what language the computer used. lol
@@nealmacdonald8191 I am near retirement from aerospace. I got to talk to enough old software engineers. Back in the day, there were no operating systems as we know them today. The computers were purpose designed and mostly single purpose. The code was written directly to the hardware, not to the operating system as it is done today. I was a contract engineer at IBM. I used to walk by the numerical control machine that made the shuttle flight recorder computers. The program was driven by a paper tape with holes in it. They were barrel shaped frames with PC boards screwed onto them. They were 64K for memory. The Challenger blew up while I was working there. They did find the computer on the ocean floor and brought it back to our plant. The data was still intact.
Were you thinking of FORTRAN? I remember when NASA suddenly found themselves in a crisis scrambling to find a new software engineer with FORTRAN experience because the one that was operating Voyagers on that end for years had upped and retired. I want to say it was kind of recent maybe 2017 or 2019
This is fantastic news! But I have a question. Around 2m35s there's a diagram indicating Voyager 1's distance from Earth as 36,000,000 km. That's less than ¼ AU; about 2 light-minutes; a small fraction of the way to Jupiter. I think you must be missing some zeroes, because you also said earlier that the craft is 21½ light-days (≈500,000,000,000 km) away! (Which seems reasonable for almost half a century of travel.) So what was that image supposed to say? Fred
@@mehill00 Yeah, now that I reconsider/recalculate, 500,000,000,000 km in 50 y would be 10,000,000,000 km/y ≈ 300 km/s, which is 10x Earth's orbital speed wrt the Sun, or 7.1x solar escape speed from Earth's orbit, which is too fast. So there appear to be some discrepancies in the video's claims about Voyager's current distance. It seems to play fast & loose with some facts in its graphics & narration. Your figures look much more reasonable.
Nothing. Trying to turn the camera on will use more power than the RTG can generate, now that it is about 50 years old. Several instruments have had to be turned off permanently because of the gradual decline in power. The camera was one of the first to be shut down.
@@RWBHerethe cameras themselves are a miracle. These were launched in the era of film and dark rooms. How these probes can send back imagery at all deserves a deep dive.
I’m assuming voyager has capacitors etc. but it crazy they can even last this long. It would be extremely impractical but also extremely cool to build a car as robust and failsafe as voyager. I don’t think it would look anything close to what a car looks like today.
This is good and encouraging information. Thank you for reporting on it. Can we also get an update on Voyager 2? Voyager 2 is the only probe to visit Uranus, and that was in 1986. It discovered Uranus has rings and that Uranus is colder than Neptune, even though it is much closer to the sun.
They are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Simply put, a thermopile heated by a radioactive ‘source’. As the ‘source’ decays, the output of the generators falls. That is why only 4 instruments are still running, there isn’t enough power to run all of it. There are no cameras left running as an example.
Unbelievable and well done NASA. What has powered it all this time and how fast is it travelling? Cheers from Stuart in Canberra, Australia only 30km from the Tidbinbilla tracking station. 🇦🇺
Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), basically a radioactive source provides heat from the energetic decay products interacting in a medium and a thermocouple converts the resulting heat to electrical power. V1 travels about 3.6 AU/year (1 AU= avg sun-Earth distance ~150 million km) or about 17 km/s…roughly 40,000 mph or 65,000 km/hour.
When I was young I used to lay outside at night and look up at the stars, watch the satellites fly by, point my 4.5" reflector at Saturn, Jupiter M42 etc , look at the Milky Way and wonder about all that exists around us. Imagine if we were to be the only intelligent life in our galaxy ... what an achievement the Voyager spacecraft actually are!
If Voyager 1 supposed to the furthest object from Earth, What about Pioneer 10 (March 3, 1972) and ( April 6, 1973) 11? Both were launched before Voyager 1 and 2. What are Pioneer 10 and 11 current position?
I’m curious about what this four sensors (magnetometers, plasma detectors, and cosmic-ray and charged-particle sensors.) have provided in past 10 years? Has the magnetic fields, plasma levels, cosmic rays and charged particles varying with the sun fluctuations? What have the scientists learned from past forty years? Do they expect any new discoveries keeping the Voyager spacecraft active?
It wasn't NASA engineers who fixed it, it collided with an alien probe and they merged into one. Someday it will return to earth seeking it's creator and all of mankind will be doomed... Oh wait, I may be thinking of something else.
The others are off to save power, yes, and because they can’t make useful measurements anymore. The remaining four are appropriate for the plasma environment away from any planets or moons.
@@mehill00 Yes, I agree. But the way it's worded it might give people with no understanding of the situation a false impression. Most people would probably assume this means the cameras were now back on, which of course would be useless even if it was possible.
Who's a good little robot, flying into intergalactic space and extending our knowledge of our local system? I've often cited Voyager as one of my favorite robots, and not just because of it's impact on (SPOILER ALERT) Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But seriously, as a kid, some of my friends parents worked on aspects of these projects. I was almost 11 years old and the memory of seeing Star Wars in the theater a few months before was still fresh in my mind. I'm so proud of the work the people who built these machines did. Their attention to detail and foresight (ok, some of it's just limitations of the time keeping things simple, but still) in designing something that can be instructed to repair itself, while being the farthest manmade object from it's engineers, staggers my imagination. 🤘🧙♂🤘
Congratulations to Voyager's TEAM. Share & collaborate with Humanity, EXCLUDE NO ONE. Get the best value out of Humanity's investment in R&D on the Universe. Get the best on board and allocate the resources so R&D not duplicated and wasted. There are far too many questions that need to be researched and answered. Space is infinite as with its resources. There will be challenges, existential threats to Humanity from Space that we need to have resolved with the clock ticking. Understand the Universe, Understand why Humanity exist, only then will Humanity continue to exist. Kill not a child, each must be allowed to blossom to their full potential. Amongst them are the geniuses with the keys we need to unlock the questions we need to have answered. Humanity from Space that we need to have resolved with the clock ticking.
The Farthest is a wonderful Irish-made film on the Voyager missions. It was a wonderful project to work on. Long after humanity has disappeared .... Voyager will still be hurtling through space.
For first time learners, Voyager 1’s travel distance map [3:14] references Alpha Centauri but it’s important to know that is only an example of distance not direction. Ok, Voyager 1 is heading towards Ophiuchus, Alpha Centauri lies in the southern celestial hemisphere, quite far from Voyager 1’s current trajectory.
