Voyager 1 has finally started glitching after a near-constant operation of 46 years.

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Within some 200+ years from now it will somehow be picked up by advanced aliens, enhanced so as to exceed its original mission thereby amassing the knowledge of this universe, after which it will return to us to ask its creator "Is there nothing more?"
 
MrGuvernment said:
They dont build em like that anymore!
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I'm not trying to take anything away from the Voyager probes, because they are nothing short of legendary, but I would argue that we do absolutely still "build them like that".

Older Solar-Powered Mars rover that's 3-month mission lasted 15 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_(rover)

Nuclear Powered Curiosity rover that has been exploring Mars for over 11 years and still going strong (and there is a newer similar rover there now also):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)

2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter has been orbiting mars for over 22 years, helping relay data from many different rovers and landers over the years, far far exceeding it's original lifespan and shattering all records in terms of longest-lived orbiter around another planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Mars_Odyssey

Ingenuity Helicopter that went to Mars along with the Perseverance Rover. Designed as a technology demonstration with a 30-day mission, it's still conducting successful flights on Mars almost 2 years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)

Meanwhile countries like India are just getting to the point of being able to land basic lunar probes. China landed a little micro-rover on mars, but it wasn't able to make it through even a single Martian Winter. The Chinese rover has been dead for over a year now, but in true Chinese fashion they continue to push the idea that the mission is still "ongoing". I guess admitting that our tiny helicopter demonstrator has already lasted longer than their entire rover mission would not make for good propaganda.

No other country even comes close to the USA/NASA in this regard. The ESA would be #2 and has conducted some very successful missions also, in a large part due to tight cooperation and technology sharing with NASA.
 
Not completely surprising when Voyager 1 is expected to lose all instruments as soon as 2025, but still... looks like the probe is entering the last chapter of its existence, when it floats through the Milky Way until it's either destroyed or picked up. Next stop is the Oort Cloud (around 300 years) followed by getting relatively close to a nearby star (40,000 years).
 
GotNoRice said:
I'm not trying to take anything away from the Voyager probes, because they are nothing short of legendary, but I would argue that we do absolutely still "build them like that".

Older Solar-Powered Mars rover that's 3-month mission lasted 15 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_(rover)

Nuclear Powered Curiosity rover that has been exploring Mars for over 11 years and still going strong (and there is a newer similar rover there now also):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)

2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter has been orbiting mars for over 22 years, helping relay data from many different rovers and landers over the years, far far exceeding it's original lifespan and shattering all records in terms of longest-lived orbiter around another planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Mars_Odyssey

Ingenuity Helicopter that went to Mars along with the Perseverance Rover. Designed as a technology demonstration with a 30-day mission, it's still conducting successful flights on Mars almost 2 years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)

Meanwhile countries like India are just getting to the point of being able to land basic lunar probes. China landed a little micro-rover on mars, but it wasn't able to make it through even a single Martian Winter. The Chinese rover has been dead for over a year now, but in true Chinese fashion they continue to push the idea that the mission is still "ongoing". I guess admitting that our tiny helicopter demonstrator has already lasted longer than their entire rover mission would not make for good propaganda.

No other country even comes close to the USA/NASA in this regard. The ESA would be #2 and has conducted some very successful missions also, in a large part due to tight cooperation and technology sharing with NASA.
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Cool post, great read first thing on a Monday morning. Thanks!
 
sad when it dies. I am always fascinated by Voyager. Too bad they can't give it one more shot at taking a photo as a going away present.
 
DukenukemX said:
Voyager 1 must have been bathed in so much radiation by now, it's hard to imagine that it still works.
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The simple silicon onboard is a lot less susceptible then anything more modern would be (even the hardened IBM stuff). Still ya to think how many comic rays that thing took to the brain and still manged to have any working CPUs onboard is amazing.
 
DukenukemX said:
Voyager 1 must have been bathed in so much radiation by now, it's hard to imagine that it still works.
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Radiation was more a problem when it was closer to the sun and planets, less of a problem now in interstellar space. Ironically, the probes could now use a little bit of (captured) radiation. Now the problem is the probe's internals are freezing death. The Plutonium-238 fueling its RTG has easily decayed to 50% by now. Loss of efficiency (due to the RTG's design) to the thermocouple has happened over time compounding this issue. Once the cold sets in, electronics stop working regardless. Both Voyagers are literally going to freeze to death. This was inevitable.
 
What kinds of radiation levels was it subjected to? Did they build it to withstand Chernobyl elephant's foot levels of radiation? Is space better or worse? Hard for us little brained people to put things on a meaningful scale...
 
Kongar said:
What kinds of radiation levels was it subjected to? Did they build it to withstand Chernobyl elephant's foot levels of radiation? Is space better or worse? Hard for us little brained people to put things on a meaningful scale...
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Cosmic rays cause issues for CPUs even on earth. A ray passing through a CPU can bump the voltage in a path and corrupt a calculation or stored bits. This effects power amplification circuits the most as one particle can cause a cascade. Thing is cosmic rays can pass through the earth and other solid bodies. You can't really just slap a hunk of lead on top of a chip or something. Designers pretty consistently screw up not accounting for radiation... Toyota's break failures from a few years ago is one example. Those where caused by bit flips. The way around it isn't to shield the CPU but to design the CPU with redundancy.. or at the very least not packing power amp type circuits too close to core logic. You can build ECC into logic circuits. However if you go connect it directly to amp circuits with no buffer, or in a matter where one flip in a amp circuit could overwhelm the logic ECC function... you end up with issues like what Toyota had.

This is the basis of designs something like the IBM RAD6000. (which powered a lot of those later long lived Mars missions) What makes it radiation resistant isn't a meter of lead or anything as some people might think. Early on alt manufacturing methods where used... but at this point those methods have become the norm at shrunk processes. SOI (Silicon on Insulator) was first developed for radation hardening (less cascading)... wtih die sizes now its required to avoid voltage leak from the transistors themselves. Hardened CPUs are just really really ECC heavy designs. The logic checks its own work, and the logic is laid out so that if the transistors providing power are hit they don't cascade and effect the ECC ability of the logic. Even the on board cache has ECC built in. So radiation still flips bits and causes issues for Rad6000, it just has the ability to understand when its effected and toss the data. This is why its funny when people knock the processing power of space chips... its the same for things like Autopilot processors for planes and such. ECC is reuqired. I mean you can't use some Intel chip that doesn't even check a simple cache security bit... :) Faster yes reliable fuck no. lol

Its chips like RAD6000 that have made NASA the leader in space. Frankly the smaller countries (including China) are just more likely to use off the shelf hardware that will do stupid shit if a ray gets a lucky hit. Indias recent moon lander used a custom made Indian CPU, other countries are catching up. Building CPUs with that high a level of ECC isn't easy. Its a more complicated design and you need to have the funds to build a CPU with almost zero commercial upside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RAD6000
Its follow up that powers James Webb and anything more recent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
 
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Along with copious error handling and correction, the simpler the design, the better; IIRC they use fairly large lithography for chips going to space as that reduces the probability of radiation causing a bit flip? I could be wrong and haven't the time to dive into it at the moment, but I could swear that was part of modern US space design.

But yeah, the guys at the various places that produce the various US probes and rovers have a pretty good understanding of the environment and how to make something as resilient as possible within the weight envelope of the mission.
 
LodeRunner said:
Along with copious error handling and correction, the simpler the design, the better; IIRC they use fairly large lithography for chips going to space as that reduces the probability of radiation causing a bit flip? I could be wrong and haven't the time to dive into it at the moment, but I could swear that was part of modern US space design.

But yeah, the guys at the various places that produce the various US probes and rovers have a pretty good understanding of the environment and how to make something as resilient as possible within the weight envelope of the mission.
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Yes you get less transistor cross talk. If a ray hits a transistor it can effect those around it as well... so the tighter the package the more likely it is a ray can cause multiple flips. The rad hardened designs purposely spread logic out... to avoid cascade type failures. Shrunk processes are not ideal for space (or even terrestrial aircraft CPUs ect). Older processes are better for ECC heavy designs. They also check every single transistor on a chip that is going into something like James Web. For systems like that they hand pick the silicon to ensure every transistor and gate is essentially as perfect as can be. That is much easier to control on older processes. BAE is charging something like 300k for one RAD750... that is mostly low volume. Its also partly cause they will fab many wafers, and toss a great many of them that aren't 100% perfect. You don't launch a 10 billion dollar telescope as an example and use a CPU that has bits fused off that didn't bake properly. :)
 
GotNoRice said:
I'm not trying to take anything away from the Voyager probes, because they are nothing short of legendary, but I would argue that we do absolutely still "build them like that".

Older Solar-Powered Mars rover that's 3-month mission lasted 15 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_(rover)

Nuclear Powered Curiosity rover that has been exploring Mars for over 11 years and still going strong (and there is a newer similar rover there now also):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)

2001 Mars Odyssey Orbiter has been orbiting mars for over 22 years, helping relay data from many different rovers and landers over the years, far far exceeding it's original lifespan and shattering all records in terms of longest-lived orbiter around another planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Mars_Odyssey

Ingenuity Helicopter that went to Mars along with the Perseverance Rover. Designed as a technology demonstration with a 30-day mission, it's still conducting successful flights on Mars almost 2 years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)

Meanwhile countries like India are just getting to the point of being able to land basic lunar probes. China landed a little micro-rover on mars, but it wasn't able to make it through even a single Martian Winter. The Chinese rover has been dead for over a year now, but in true Chinese fashion they continue to push the idea that the mission is still "ongoing". I guess admitting that our tiny helicopter demonstrator has already lasted longer than their entire rover mission would not make for good propaganda.

No other country even comes close to the USA/NASA in this regard. The ESA would be #2 and has conducted some very successful missions also, in a large part due to tight cooperation and technology sharing with NASA.
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Def seem to for space exploration, more just a snide comment about technology in general these days, last a year and then dying
 
Bigbacon said:
sad when it dies. I am always fascinated by Voyager. Too bad they can't give it one more shot at taking a photo as a going away present.
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While I do not follow much of this, is it just me, or as you get older, you start to get a bit of emotional connection to events like this. That piece of technology, suddenly makes you go, WOW! All it has done for humanity, off alone, in space, so far away.. now having problems and little to nothing we can do to help...
 
longblock454 said:
Hopefully it's been captured by aliens and they are just figuring out to reverse engineer it to send back messages.
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Many of us alive at the time of these historic launches are anxiously awaiting the return of the dope beats that alien DJ's will cut out of those sweet, sweet 12 inchers we sent along for the ride.....................Ch-Ch-Chaka...Chaka Khan...Ch.....wait...KHAN!? OMG I THINK I JUST INCEPTIONED! ;)
 
Aurelius said:
Not completely surprising when Voyager 1 is expected to lose all instruments as soon as 2025, but still... looks like the probe is entering the last chapter of its existence, when it floats through the Milky Way until it's either destroyed or picked up. Next stop is the Oort Cloud (around 300 years) followed by getting relatively close to a nearby star (40,000 years).
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It's running into a power limit. As more of the Pu239 in the RTG decays it has less total power available. NASA has been stretching the system lifespan by incrementally turning off more onboard devices, but in a few years it won't have enough power to run the radio transmitter itself. Unless they're able to run it at less than full power that's game over since it won't be able to report any data back. Even if they can it's so far out that even the biggest antennas in the DSN can barely pick up it's signal; even if possible lowering transmit power will only worsen the problem. Potentially meaning that even if Voyager could send a half-power signal home we might not be able to receive it.
 
whats also amazing about these things is that they have travelled so far and didn't run into a single object that would damage, destroy, or push it off course.
 
Bigbacon said:
whats also amazing about these things is that they have travelled so far and didn't run into a single object that would damage, destroy, or push it off course.
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Whole lot of nothin out there. In the grand scheme of things, its like taking a marble and moving it an inch over the course of a day in your house and being surprised it didnt run into anything in this entire world
 
Bigbacon said:
whats also amazing about these things is that they have travelled so far and didn't run into a single object that would damage, destroy, or push it off course.
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Darunion said:
Whole lot of nothin out there. In the grand scheme of things, its like taking a marble and moving it an inch over the course of a day in your house and being surprised it didnt run into anything in this entire world
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Indeed. In very broad terms, if our solar system were about 1 inch from end to end, the next nearest star is about 1 football field away. And for this analogy, Voyager has traveled the equivalent of maybe 3/4 an inch.
 
Darunion said:
Whole lot of nothin out there. In the grand scheme of things, its like taking a marble and moving it an inch over the course of a day in your house and being surprised it didnt run into anything in this entire world
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i get that but it still interesting to think about it.
 
chameleoneel said:
Indeed. In very broad terms, if our solar system were about 1 inch from end to end, the next nearest star is about 1 football field away. And for this analogy, Voyager has traveled the equivalent of maybe 3/4 an inch.
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To add to the analogy, the Sun would be less than 3 microns in size if the solar system was about an inch across. That is half the size of a red blood cell. The odds of hitting anything out there is virtually 0 if you're not aiming directly at it because everything is so small relative to the vastness of space.
 
Darunion said:
Whole lot of nothin out there. In the grand scheme of things, its like taking a marble and moving it an inch over the course of a day in your house and being surprised it didnt run into anything in this entire world
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chameleoneel said:
Indeed. In very broad terms, if our solar system were about 1 inch from end to end, the next nearest star is about 1 football field away. And for this analogy, Voyager has traveled the equivalent of maybe 3/4 an inch.
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Tsumi said:
To add to the analogy, the Sun would be less than 3 microns in size if the solar system was about an inch across. That is half the size of a red blood cell. The odds of hitting anything out there is virtually 0 if you're not aiming directly at it because everything is so small relative to the vastness of space.
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Bigbacon said:
whats also amazing about these things is that they have travelled so far and didn't run into a single object that would damage, destroy, or push it off course.
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Not really. I liken it to trying to shoot down aircraft with ballistics. There is way more empty sky then your target.

I had to the privilege to work at MITLL for a few years. The chip foundry there made some really cool custom stuff for spacecraft.
 
Darunion said:
Whole lot of nothin out there. In the grand scheme of things, its like taking a marble and moving it an inch over the course of a day in your house and being surprised it didnt run into anything in this entire world
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The coolest part about space is the time element, IMHO......that's the part that melts noodles. You look up in the sky and see all this stuff and go "Wow"......but then have to remember, all of those bright lights...that's how they looked...a hundred thousand, a million....or more years ago...or whatever period of time it takes for light to stay in the visible spectrum that we can see with our eyes old.......hell, those lights may have blinked out 5 million years ago....but the light from those catastrophic events (let's assume a Nova for a Star) hasn't reached us yet :)

So then we see a note about scientists discovering a new Nova in the sky.....and we go "oh a star went nova!"...and we gotta correct ourselves and go "Yes a Star went Nova...A looooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago!".


View: https://coub.com/view/9tp78
 
GotNoRice said:
No other country even comes close to the USA/NASA in this regard. The ESA would be #2 and has conducted some very successful missions also, in a large part due to tight cooperation and technology sharing with NASA.
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Management 101: set the bar extremely low - destroy that goal many times over.
Considering, how many $1,000,000,000.00 of dollars we dump into NASA (...and now SpaceX), I would expect a remote control robot to last more than 3 months.
I mean we have been mass producing RC cars for over 60 years. The only thing that keeps them from going forever is a better battery.

ChadD said:
Still ya to think how many comic rays that thing took to the brain and still manged to have any working CPUs onboard is amazing.
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Is that where super-hilarious comedians are born? They will save the planet from unfunniness?
 
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sleepeeg3 said:
Management 101: set the bar extremely low - destroy that goal many times over.
Considering, how many $1,000,000,000.00 of dollars we dump into NASA (...and now SpaceX), I would expect a remote control robot to last more than 3 months.
I mean we have been mass producing RC cars for over 60 years. The only thing that keeps them from going forever is a better battery.
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The mission deadlines are largely politics and budgeting driven. If you break before completing the mission you told Congress they were buying you get dragged into the capital for an ass chewing. With very rare exceptions there won't be money in the budget for a do-over if you fail, so you design your hardware to to have a very high chance of completing the mission it was sold to do; since planned obsolesce isn't part of how NASA missions are designed a >90% chance of lasting T means it will probably last several times that before finally failing. With the exception of missions which have a hard end point beyond which no continuation is possible (ex deep impact) or a hard limit on consumables (ex most IR telescopes with liquid nitrogen/helium coolant) designing them to have a very high likelihood of lasting between 1T and 1.1T years isn't possible; these aren't Toyota Camery's where mechanical wearout rates can be adjusted to last just long enough that the expensive parts will last as long as the vehicle is worth keeping on the road and cheaper wear parts can be done to last a few years and be repeatedly swapped out.

For shorter missions (ie those around the earth/moon) this is somewhat counter productive; more overall science could be achieved by designing them to the low budget/high risk cost/quality profile that has about a 70% success rate instead of the high cost/high budget one that NASAs flagship missions use. The latter has a ~90% historical success rate but costs several times as much. But politicians throwing fits anytime something big fails makes that a non-option for anything high visibility even when the science and engineering would make it a more pragmatic option.

For longer duration missions even if cheaper baselines with doovers allowed was politically acceptable, practicality would prevent it. 5-10 years of design and construction, and 5-10 years of operation is a good part of a career; and for the people leading the mission is generally going to be the second half of it. A decade+ delay for a restart is going to put some of the people involved past retirement and jack up the careers of the more junior people for whom the mission was going to be what built their careers.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Management 101: set the bar extremely low - destroy that goal many times over.
Considering, how many $1,000,000,000.00 of dollars we dump into NASA (...and now SpaceX), I would expect a remote control robot to last more than 3 months.
I mean we have been mass producing RC cars for over 60 years. The only thing that keeps them from going forever is a better battery.
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This has got to be one of the dumbest posts I've read on here in a very long time. You obviously have zero understanding of the difficulties involved in interplanetary exploration and operating these machines in an extremely hostile environment for prolonged periods of time. The rovers on Mars are subjected to temperatures between 95F and -166F, along with harsh Dust Storms, etc. Round-Trip communication between the planets can be anywhere from 10-48 minutes (usually on the higher end of that range) depending on the position of the two planets. These are not "RC cars"
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, they are vehicles that receive new instructions periodically and then carry out those instructions on their own with zero interactive human input.

And as someone who is actually deeply involved in RC cars and trucks as a hobby, I can say that they are extremely maintenance intensive. It's not at all uncommon to wear out a drive-shaft, stub-axle, spur, bearing, differential, etc. I've gone through probably 25+ LiPo batteries in the last 10 years. Constant maintenance is part of the hobby. That is a very very far cry from something that operates far from earth with no ability to swap out parts, batteries, or perform other physical maintenance after the mission is launched.

There is no reason for you to shit on these absolute true heroes of Science just because you are completely and utterly ignorant of what is involved in carrying out those missions.

China has plenty of money to throw around these days. Why didn't their rover mission last longer?
 
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