Glenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023

Missed the exciting news that the boffins at NASA JPL have figured out a way to use reserve power to keep using all the scientific instruments on board Voyager 2 for even longer. For a mission that only had a requirement to last until about 1982, job well done. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-will-do-more-science-with-new-power-strategy

Several years ago, I wrote extensively about space probes, including *six* articles about or involving the Voyager probes! https://glog.glennf.com/blog/2017/8/4/if-you-love-voyager-like-i-love-voyager

NASA’s Voyager Will Do More Science With New Power Strategy

The plan will keep Voyager 2’s science instruments turned on a few years longer than previously anticipated, enabling yet more revelations from interstellar space.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Show threadGlenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023
The Voyager mission was full of incredibly clever ways to extend the probes’ lives:
* Using backup computers for image compression for Neptune & Uranus (Voyager 2)
* Including highly efficient error-correction encoding hardware onboard that took *years* to develop the decoder for (improving data rate efficiency)
* Making use of an expanded deep space network (DSN)
* Incredibly careful energy budgeting that has added probably a decade to the probes’ lives
Show threadGlenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023

* Solving a lubricant problem on the camera tracking system that allowed it to take non-blurry photos! https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/27/us/camera-swivel-on-voyager-sticks-while-craft-passes-behind-saturn.html

Data compression and error-correction algorithms sound fairly boring. But these improvements plus the DSN expansion meant that vastly more data could be sent as the Voyagers moved past Jupiter.

CAMERA SWIVEL ON VOYAGER STICKS WHILE CRAFT PASSES BEHIND SATURN

The New York Times
Show threadCharlie LoydApr 30, 2023
@glennf Just camping out in the replies here to make friends with other people affronted by “sound fairly boring”.
Show threadGlenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023
@vruba I will never get over that when they sent a Reed-Solomon encoder into space, there were no Reed-Solomon decoders *on Earth*.
Show threadMike Rose
@glennf @vruba shame we sent the prototype thataway
Apr 30, 2023 at 7:13pmWeb
Show threadGlenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023
@MikeTRose @vruba Build the decoder on the way down