NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a computer glitch that’s causing a bit of a communication breakdown between the 46-year-old probe and its mission team on Earth.

  • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    For those who didn’t read the article, voyager 1 is still sending and transmitting data. It’s stuck in a loop sending the same packets to Earth on repeat but it is receiving commands just fine. It’s not completely dark.

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That’s fantastic, that means all they have to do is reset some components and it should restore functionality. I say should, it’s still a scary thing to turn on/off components om a satellite bcz you aren’t guaranteed they’ll come on. Nasa people usually prefer soft resets to hard resets of components, but we’ll see what happens.

      One of the satellites I worked on had to have a software update to do a soft reset of a component every time it tried to write certain data. It was really scary bcz we thought we had lost one of our redundancies right after launch, which would have sucked.

      But, we didn’t. Anyway, just wanted to give a little bit of insight into what the FOT might be thinking about while they’re trying to recover the satellite to nominal state.

      • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Yeah I got very sad when I saw the headline and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Voyager 1’s death will be far sadder than most public figures. Maybe any.

        • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Same, for a moment I was really concerned. Voyager is like a lifetime achievement for humanity at this point. When it stops communicating its going to be a big loss for the scientific community, and population as a whole. I’m not looking forward to hearing about its loss of functionality in the next decade or so.

        • gazter@aussie.zone
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          7 months ago

          I don’t know if I would consider Voyager to be ‘dead’ if it stops transmitting.

          If I put a message in a bottle, with a blinky light on it, then throw it into the ocean, the message is still there even if the blinky light goes out.

    • deleted@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      So the title did its job which is you understand nothing until you enter their site, drive traffic, display ads, and possibly collect your data in the process.

      • originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Sure and Lemmy did its work by letting me and others relay the info. I hate ads as much as the next guy, especially targeted ads, but the internet is free and I don’t pay CNN a dime so I’ll take the hit for you this time. Next time, you click the clickbait and fill us in ☺️

      • Exec@pawb.social
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        7 months ago

        possibly collect your data in the process

        Nooo they respect your privacy just share your stuff with 967 of their partners