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Always have a backup. You may not use it for 43 years, but youβll be glad itβs there when you do.
I'm only 41 years old.
This recievier has been working for my whole life, goes out of service 15 billion miles away, turns on a backup reciever, and is now back in contact with NASA.
.........but the ice cream machine at McDonalds is still broken.
Both are by design. The ice cream machine actually just got a DMCA exception so the company that makes it no longer can dictate who repairs it.
I'm picturing the Voyager 1 terminal is an ancient computer from the 1970s hooked up to a large parabolic antenna, and everyone is afraid to upgrade it because they might mess something up. I'm sure that's not the case, but its what lives in my mind.
Since I was thinking about it I looked up some stuff: "So Voyager-1 does not βreallyβ have a computer, in the sense that it does not have an operating system or RAM or a microprocessor. It was built in the 60s before any of this was invented and used CMOS-based microcontroller chips from Texas Instruments. Overall, it has a 16-bit processor and a MASSIVE memory of 70 KILOBYTES. That is smaller memory than a thumbnail of a phone image today, but it was enough to send images through which we discovered Jupiter has rings and much more."
It's sad it'll probably lose contact relatively soon. Does anyone know if there are any plans for a new long distance probe?
They're already out there. Just don't get as much news as Voyager. Unfortunately I don't think any will be capable of lasting as long since we stopped using the radio isotope generators. New horizons is currently in the Kupier belt. It's the 5th such probe to reach escape velocity from our solar system. Pioneer 10 and 11 were the other non-voyager probes.
Edit: I was incorrect, new horizons does use an RTG for power. But right now its mission is slated to end in 2029. I wonder if it will be kept alive like the Voyager probes.
Edit 2: yeah, the RTG is slated to run out of power to run the transmitters in the 2030s. It was originally designed to be more powerful but the DOE delayed delivery of the plutonium 238 required.
Dept of Education? D O Emissions? Can't figure it out even with some searching
Department of Energy.
Department of Energy
Cool. Thank you for the info. I'll have to look them up.
Sorry I put a couple updates in there as well.
I think for the Voyager launches the planets and the sun were aligned in such a way that the probes could be slingshotted around them to gain speed. I think such an alignment is quite rare?
Talk about a slow troubleshooting process. Thats, what, 80,000,000ms latency?
Cell phone broke, now using pay phone.
