NASA Gets Response From Spacecraft 13 Billion Miles Away

[ABX]

NASA has just received a response from the void, and believers everywhere are losing their collective minds.
After 37 years of inactivity, the NASA spacecraft Voyager 1 fired up its thrusters for the first time in nearly four decades all the way over in interstellar space.
This incredible – and unsuspected – triumph means Voyager 1 can once again communicate with Earth, from 13 billion miles away......

http://sciencevibe.com/2018/03/18/nasa-gets-response-from-spacecraft-13-billion-miles-away/

[WingNot]

Oh shit.   V'ger.   This could be bad....real bad! 

[GtHawk]

Oh shit.   V'ger.   This could be bad....real bad!

We best make sure that we give V'Ger some, er, as they emphasized in TA, positive strokes to keep it happy.
 

[Polly Ticks]

That is so stinking cool! 

[catfish1957]

"Voyager 1 fired up its thrusters for the first time in nearly four decades all the way over in interstellar space."

I for one would like to get an explanation.  Makes no sense.

[Polly Ticks]

"Voyager 1 fired up its thrusters for the first time in nearly four decades all the way over in interstellar space."

I for one would like to get an explanation.  Makes no sense.

It didn't do it on its own.  The programmers decided to give it a try and see what happened.  From the article:

On Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, Voyager engineers fired up the four thrusters and waited eagerly as the test results traveled through space, taking 19 hours and 35 minutes to reach an antenna in part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, at Goldstone, California.

Amazingly, the test was successful. Now, the Voyager team, based in Pasadena, California, is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980.

I think maybe the most amazing aspect of it was that that they still had the code documentation from nearly 40 years ago. The programmers on my project team can't seem to dig up anything about a coding change from 4 years ago, never mind 4 decades ago.

[Elderberry]

coded in an outdated assembler language,

When did Assembly Language become outdated?

[GtHawk]

"Voyager 1 fired up its thrusters for the first time in nearly four decades all the way over in interstellar space."

I for one would like to get an explanation.  Makes no sense.

So would the Aliens that had it in their space museum, scared the dickens out of the younguns!

[Joe Wooten]

It didn't do it on its own.  The programmers decided to give it a try and see what happened.  From the article:

I think maybe the most amazing aspect of it was that that they still had the code documentation from nearly 40 years ago. The programmers on my project team can't seem to dig up anything about a coding change from 4 years ago, never mind 4 decades ago.

It could be because several of the original project team are still working on it and training a few youngsters.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/15/voyager-1-and-2-space-journey-nasa

[Polly Ticks]

It could be because several of the original project team are still working on it and training a few youngsters.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/15/voyager-1-and-2-space-journey-nasa

Apparently so.

Engineers are not given to emotion, but the romance of this incredible voyage of discovery has, by their own account, kept the ageing mission team together. Even latecomers, who were at school when Voyager was launched, have been working on the same mission for 30 years and more. “I’m in my mid-50s and treat the craft like my ageing parents,” says Suzy Dodd, who was 16 at launch, joined as a graduate student and whose card now proclaims surely one of the cooler job titles in science: Project manager, Voyager Interstellar Mission.
[--snip--]
“ Most of the engineers here have dedicated their career to this project. They have turned down opportunities for promotions and other things because they like Voyager so much they want to stay with it.”

For the mission’s much-honoured chief scientist and spokesman since 1972, CalTech professor Ed Stone, aged 79, the romance of Voyager lies more in what it has discovered since he joined the project aged 36. “Yes, the Space Age was a young man’s game back then,” he says, not a little ruefully, sitting on a park bench on the green university campus. “We all knew we were on a mission of discovery. We just had no idea how much discovery there would be. We just kept finding things we didn’t know were there to be found.

Very cool article.  Thanks for adding it.

[Texas Yellow Rose]

    Fascinating

[Restored]

When did Assembly Language become outdated?

Seriously? There is no need for it anymore

[Elderberry]

Seriously? There is no need for it anymore

The point of programming in assembly is the same as it always has been: speed. It would be ridiculous to write a lot of code in assembler, but there are some optimizations the compiler isn't aware of, and for a small enough window of code, a human is going to do better.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/791533/why-do-you-program-in-assembly

[endicom]

coded in an outdated assembler language,

When did Assembly Language become outdated?

The hardware has changed. The compilers have changed. Global warming.

[WingNot]

The hardware has changed. The compilers have changed. Global warming.

I hope when V'ger returns looking for it's creator, someone will be able to write code and program it. 

[catfish1957]

I hope when V'ger returns looking for it's creator, someone will be able to write code and program it.

Understand there is some recent classified SETI binary communication that concerns the Voyager craft:

Location:

Toward Constellation Cygnus

Message:

Attention 3rd Planet of the Solar Federation......   We will assume control ......We will assume control/.

Contact to be made in 94 years  0 Months 11 Days

[Free Vulcan]

Understand there is some recent classified SETI binary communication that concerns the Voyager craft:

Location:

Toward Constellation Cygnus

Message:

Attention 3rd Planet of the Solar Federation......   We will assume control ......We will assume control/.

Contact to be made in 94 years  0 Months 11 Days

P'shaw. Cygnus always talks alot of smack, but never delivers.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

coded in an outdated assembler language,

When did Assembly Language become outdated?

It doesn't say AL became outdated, it says an AL became outdated.




the computer on the Viking Orbiter were General Electric 18-bit TTL machines (not 12-bit) with a bit-serial, single register accumulator and bit-serial access to plated-wire RAM (4096 words).  It executed around 25,000 instructions per second.


Voyager used the same computer as the Viking Orbiter in only one of its 3 computerized subsystems (the Command and Control Subsystem).  The Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem used an augmented version of the CCS computer that inserted a unit (the Hybrid Buffer Interface Circuit (HYBIC)) between the CPU and RAM, which intercepted instructions to add indexed addressing capability (at the expense of other instructions), and accelerated instructions that used idle cycles. The third computer, used in the Flight Data Subsystem, was a new custom design in CMOS with a 128 register, nibble-serial CPU and 8096 words of 16-bit RAM. It ran about 80,000 instructions per second.

http://www.cpushack.com/space-craft-cpu.html