Yen-Rong Wong 黃彥蓉May 1, 2023
Glenn Fleishman

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)
Apr 30, 2023 at 5:10pmWeb
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 RoseApr 30, 2023
@glennf @vruba shame we sent the prototype thataway
Show threadGlenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023
@MikeTRose @vruba Build the decoder on the way down
Show threadRobertoApr 30, 2023

@glennf wow. I somehow knew of each separately, but had never seen all together. Thanks for posting.

Any suggested book/source on Pioneer and Voyager engineering "after launch"? A millisecond search didn't reveal any clear reference.

Show threadRobertoApr 30, 2023
@glennf sorry, an additional millisecond resulted on this reco The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty-Year Voyager Mission. by Jim Bell https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22571516
Goodreads

Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

Goodreads
Show threadGlenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023
@rmateu Gosh, I’ve never read a book for adults about them! One must exist, though? I am unaware.
Show threadPaulApr 30, 2023
@glennf You forgot about reverse-engineering all of that Borg technology
Show threadCharlie HarringtonMay 1, 2023
@glennf I had a dream about a secret Voyager 3 probe and wrote a short story about it! https://f52.charlieharrington.com/stories/voyager-3/
Voyager 3

Show threadAdam Shostack  Apr 30, 2023
@glennf Even cooler - they're doing it on almost zero budget.
Show threadAntony JohnstonApr 30, 2023
@glennf I love the Voyager program so much. Just knowing these machines are out there, inconceivably distant, still doing their thing, is amazing and inspiring.
Show threadGlenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023
@antonyjohnston Indeed! It seems so implausible that we have a reach that far with such fragile objects. I honestly liked that part of Star Trek: The Motion Picture – the notion that Voyager was found and responsible for so much.
Show threadLazarou Monkey Terror 🚀💙🌈May 1, 2023
@antonyjohnston @glennf it gives me genuine strength, knowing they are out there and what got them that far.
Show threadNicolas Ward Apr 30, 2023
@glennf Any time I worry about my team's oldest systems, which are also purely software, I think about what JPL teams are doing with the Voyager probes.
Show threadKimberleyApr 30, 2023
@glennf It's incredible that we're still able to communicate with a probe launched in the 70's (well, both of them really) let alone able to reconfigure its power to continue its mission in interstellar space. What a marvel. Great job, NASA JPL!
Show thread(((Jann Gobble)))🏳️‍🌈Apr 30, 2023

@glennf This is why you find these fantastic apparatuses costing so much money! They have built them to - in so many ways - be remotely programmed to do so many fantastic things!

ps: I had to look up the plural usage on that noun! 😂
I was GONNA use 'apparati'. 😳

Show threadLéon PlankenApr 30, 2023
@jann good job looking it up! I have a pet peeve for backconstructed plurals and singulars such as virii and bicep. 😅
Show threadDr. DrangApr 30, 2023
@glennf Send more Chuck Berry.
Show threadGlenn FleishmanApr 30, 2023
@drdrang You’re trying to get the Earth destroyed!
Show threadInarticulateQuilterApr 30, 2023
@glennf this makes me so freakin’ happy — keep going, Voyager 2, keep going
Show threadBearGApr 30, 2023
@glennf My favorite note about the Voyager series was about the company president of TRW (which I was an employee of), which did a lot/all of the work in building the Voyagers. As the probes went farther than expected, the TRW president sent out a whining email to all/most of the company, bemoaning the fact that the probes were built to REALLY exceed the government requirement. At that time,TRW was known to "gold plate" all of their satellites, which were usually First of their kind. He wanted it to fail after 1982.
Show threadLéon PlankenApr 30, 2023
@BearGriffin @glennf despite that president, sounds like a great place to have worked!
Show threadMarcin Juszkiewicz 🙃May 1, 2023

@glennf NASA is bad at defining time of life for their devices...

Which is a good thing.

Show threadMarkMay 2, 2023
@glennf Seeing these stories about Voyager reminds me why we should support public/NASA endeavors over private outsourced companies. Is there any doubt that a private company would slam the the door shut the day after the EOM passed? Let alone all the discoveries made along the way that would be held in a company vault instead of shared.