I ran a few research tasks at JPL, small dollar studies.
We'd often recruit part time work from engineers around the lab through informal networks, (instead of the official channels that segment by "specialization").
One year, one of the developers on my task was the apparently last person who could encode the command sequences for Voyager 2 (hoping memory serves me correctly - event though it was only 8 years ago). She would occasionally come late to meetings because they were dealing with some trouble with the old satellite.
Pretty amazing how little is set aside for these projects that most the staff keeping it alive have "day jobs". I hope she's still uploading
wildzzz 3 hours ago [-]
To be fair, nearly all of the science payloads on Voyager 1 & 2 have been shut down. The probes are doing very little. The doesn't take away from the very unique science they are doing but its a far cry from what the program offices were doing in 30-40 years ago. I'd expect anyone working on a Voyager probe in 2026 to need something else to do most of the day.
w-ll 30 minutes ago [-]
it might not have science payloads, but the science and engineering of at least talking to a 50 y/o satellite some 13,000,000,000 miles away is worth it right? right?
physicalecon 3 hours ago [-]
Some would call that an organizational failure. I suppose it depends on the budgets.
stringfood 1 hours ago [-]
not to be that guy but I have faith a powerful AI could understand all the ins and outs of the voyager code no matter what language
golem14 1 hours ago [-]
Not to be that other guy, but AI might take a few tries, and you really might not get a 2nd try with these probes.
monocasa 56 minutes ago [-]
> You're right! That sequence does brick Voyager 2's CCS. Let's try ....
mrkpdl 58 minutes ago [-]
Based on what documentation?
LPisGood 55 minutes ago [-]
Setting aside AI, it’s a little outrageous they had her come in to communicate with it rather than write down how to communicate with it.
obmelvin 17 minutes ago [-]
In most cases that would indicate an organizational failure. However, if something is trillions of miles away, and wrong commands could break communication etc, I'd probably just stick with the most experienced person as well.
xvilka 8 minutes ago [-]
I wish more robotic missions like that were sent. Not necessarily the most expensive ones, just one that can use only gravity assists and plutonium power generators. They could be relatively small ones. Maybe even trying to ride some of the small rocks/asteroids, now that we have a better catalogues of such.
gjkood 1 hours ago [-]
Just the other day I heard about the heroic effort[0] to restore communication with Voyager 2 after they inadvertently changed the antenna to point in the wrong direction due to some planned manoeuvres.
Definitely worth a listen if you get the time.
For me personally, I feel this project is the greatest engineering effort in human history bringing together the work of Newton, Kepler, the mathematics of the celestial navigation, gravitational assist techniques[1], etc. necessary to keep a little probe on its route accurately over 50 years in space.
A slight tangent here is a technical deep dive on Voyager 1 fixing a memory corruption error in 2023 by hand 15 billion miles away. Blows my mind of the reverse engineering done to achieve this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcUycQoz0zg
cynicalsecurity 12 minutes ago [-]
Even Voyager can’t retire in today's economy.
nullhole 3 hours ago [-]
Not a very good title, given that the subtitle for the very same article gives the important context that "Voyager 2 would have had to shut down one of its last remaining instruments later this year, until NASA made some power changes."
(as an aside, a celebratory coffee mug for when Voyager 1 finally gets to the 1-light-day-from-earth mark would be very popular, in case anyone from the JPL store is reading this. 'Yesterday's sunrise, today!')
There's not a lot to do. They have enough hydrazine left to keep them pointing back at earth until 2040 or so[1]. So you could perhaps make them point in different directions for a bit, but that is risky as if something goes wrong we might lose contact. And there wouldn't be much point, since there's not enough power to use any of the cameras or other fancy instruments.
...did you seriously just say that? These spacecraft were developed with increidble expertise and intentionality. Give it to a "frontier model" and they'll destroy it faster than you can blink.
petterroea 3 hours ago [-]
"Oops, you are right. I shut down the spacecraft, and now it will never boot again. Here's how it happened:"
sailingparrot 2 hours ago [-]
Is this what AI psychosis looks like ?
What are LLMs going to do? Flap the antenna at a specific frequency to achieve faster than light travel?
icehawk 2 hours ago [-]
Why would it be fun? What do you think could be accomplished?
downrightmike 3 hours ago [-]
you don't have $20/mo?
nofunsir 3 hours ago [-]
What does this even mean? Hand our remote controlled flying nuclear powered Von Neumann state machine sensors over to matrix multiplication?
One year, one of the developers on my task was the apparently last person who could encode the command sequences for Voyager 2 (hoping memory serves me correctly - event though it was only 8 years ago). She would occasionally come late to meetings because they were dealing with some trouble with the old satellite.
Pretty amazing how little is set aside for these projects that most the staff keeping it alive have "day jobs". I hope she's still uploading
Definitely worth a listen if you get the time.
For me personally, I feel this project is the greatest engineering effort in human history bringing together the work of Newton, Kepler, the mathematics of the celestial navigation, gravitational assist techniques[1], etc. necessary to keep a little probe on its route accurately over 50 years in space.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/08/02/1191341035/nasa-voyager-2-spa...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Minovitch
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17658964/
(as an aside, a celebratory coffee mug for when Voyager 1 finally gets to the 1-light-day-from-earth mark would be very popular, in case anyone from the JPL store is reading this. 'Yesterday's sunrise, today!')
[1]: https://space.stackexchange.com/a/36009