This seems very likely that there was a flipped bit, considering the high-radiation environment Voyager 1 is in.<p>This happened to Voyager 2 not too long ago, where it was returning invalid and random data. Turns out, it was a bit flip [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/voyager-2-likely-suffering-from-flipped-bit-syndrome/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/voyager-2-likely-suffering...</a>
I just realized that Voyager 1 took 45 years to get to less than one <i>light-day</i> from Earth. Which is still a huge distance, but it just puts into perspective how daunting the task of covering several <i>light-years</i> with a spacecraft really is...
Those systems are older than the 6502, so they must be extremely simple seen from today's complexity. Amazing what one can achieve without complexity. How much technology today gets wasted for no good, like e.g. serving ads.
I wonder if a continuous wave signal is part of the science package. It might be the last thing they can reliably send, given it has no digital dependency and is just a tone, at a set frequency (ideally coming of a thermally stable crystal or something)<p>You can do stuff with a continuous wave, analyse the doppler shift, align to it, irrespective of the bitstream.<p>I imagine at some stage, we will lose signal. Do we get radar bounce back? (some early astronomy was about bouncing radar off planets, Robert Buderi talks about it) -The dish, if it stays in some kind of alignment, might reflect enough to be detected.
Isn’t V1 past our solar system? Do I remember that right? This is the only craft that we have at those distances. Super curious to see the outcome of this. We know a bit about outside our solar system but have we ruled out the possibility that our understanding is flawed? Not the sensors? Interesting indeed, considering the signal is still strong, it’s still pointing towards earth, everything else seems nominal.
I’m blown away by this epitome of reliability. This thing is older than me, hurling across the space exposed to all sorts of hostile particles and working as expected. And here I’m struggling to keep a service up for more than a month.
> Launched in 1977, both Voyagers have operated far longer than mission planners expected, and are the only spacecraft to collect data in interstellar space.<p>Why haven't we launched more since they proved so useful?
Long system commands with a ton of switches usually give pause, requiring at least a couple of reviews before pressing <enter>. Two day turnarounds are a whole other level.<p>Interesting problem nonetheless.
People interested in knowing more about Bitflip. "The Universe is Hostile to Computers" by Veritasium is good video.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/AaZ_RSt0KP8</a>
Cosmic ray bit flip in the code, most likely.<p>Very relevant recent thread:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31016042" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31016042</a>
I wonder how do they manage to maintain rather precise orientation of antennas for such a long time. Probably they don't have much power to steer the antennas.
Why is interstellar space higher radiation? Would have thought most radiation would come from the sun, so as they get farther from that there’d be less…?
Some days I think: I’m working on some cool stuff at my job, look how neat!<p>But today I know I’ll never work on a project as cool as interacting with hardware at the edge of our solar system.