NASA's interstellar Voyager probes get software updates beamed from 12 billion miles away

[Seldom Bucket]

Artist's depiction of Voyager 1 in space. (Image credit: NASA / JPL)



About 46 years after NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched on an epic journey to explore space, the probes’ antique hardware continues to receive tweaks from afar.
One update, a software fix, ought to tend to the corrupted data that Voyager 1 began transmitting last year, and another set aims to prevent gunk from building up in both spacecraft's thrusters. Together, these updates intend to keep the spacecraft in contact with Earth for as long as possible.
"This far into the mission, the engineering team is being faced with a lot of challenges for which we just don’t have a playbook," Linda Spilker, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "But they continue to come up with creative solutions."

NASA's interstellar Voyager probes get software updates beamed from 12 billion miles away

"This far into the mission, the engineering team is being faced with a lot of challenges for which we just don’t have a playbook."

www.space.com

 

[biometrics]

This is so cool.

 

[Sonikku]

Both spacecraft are operating with faults that cannot be cleared. One of them has bad portion of RAM that was damaged in a Saturn flyby in the 80s.
Takes about 25 hours now for the transmission from earth to reach the spacecraft, and the same time for the downlink reply to reach earth

 

[biometrics]

Both spacecraft are operating with faults that cannot be cleared. One of them has bad portion of RAM that was damaged in a Saturn flyby in the 80s.
Takes about 25 hours now for the transmission from earth to reach the spacecraft, and the same time for the downlink reply to reach earth

One of the changes is that the craft will rotate more causing partial blackouts, this is due to blocked thruster tubes, buys them another five years.

 

[Sonikku]

One of the changes is that the craft will rotate more causing partial blackouts, this is due to blocked thruster tubes, buys them another five years.

The biggest issues are:
- Aging of the thermocouples in the RTG units as well as decay of the Pu239 isotope, eventually not enough power will be available to do anything
- Diminishing uplink and downlink budget as the distance increases
- The thruster tubes have been degrading for quite some time, and yes, the scheduled spins to reorient the craft will have to be changed, contributing to the blackout problem.