Featured in this episode of Tech News of the Week
Spacecrafts Voyager 1 and 2 were both launched in 1977, as was I. And just like me, they have been hurtling through the void for the last 46 years. While our original programming was ok, we both have needed constant adjustments and patches to stay in prime operating condition.
Unlike me, Voyager 1 and 2 did not stay tied to this celestial paradise we call Earth, and instead flung themselves out of the solar system entirely, with Voyager 1 reaching 15B miles from the sun and its compatriot a slightly less 12.5B miles. At those distances, light takes 22.5 and 18.7 hours respectively to reach the probes from our tiny blue dot, transmitting data at a staggering 160 bits per second.
Both probes, like yours truly, are starting to show their age with degraded systems and garbled data. NASA has deployed a patch to Voyager 2 to help with a bug in the AACS component that controls the craft’s orientation. They are now waiting with bated breath to see if the patch fixes the issues, or overwrites essential code, causing a failure and loss of communication.
It’s one thing to brick a server that’s an hour drive away in a data center, and quite another to inadvertently disable a probe that’s 12.5B miles away. For that reason, NASA has chosen to forgo the patch on Voyager 1, since they consider the data its sending back more valuable.
I too have stopped receiving bug patches and I suspect my orientation system is on the fritz, based on my experience this summer riding the tilt’a’whirl. Is my data as precious as Voyager 1? That’s for history to decide. Happy birthday to Voyager 1 and 2, and I guess to myself.