NASA's Voyager 2 survives glitch, gets back to interstellar science

[Michael]

NASA's Voyager 2 makes triumphant return to interstellar science after glitch

NASA's Voyager 2 is an elder among spacecraft. It launched in 1977 and is currently exploring interstellar space around 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion kilometers) away from us. Voyager suffered a worrying glitch in late January that shut off its science instruments. Good news: The spacecraft is alive and well.

NASA announced on Tuesday that Voyager 2 has returned to normal operations. "The five operating science instruments, which were turned off by the spacecraft's fault protection routine, are back on and returning normal science data," the space agency said.

It's actually pretty amazing that computer and hardware technology launched in the late 1970's, is still operational in deep space, and it continues to provide us with important scientific data which would otherwise be inaccessible to us.

It kinds reminds me of a popular song from that era.

I sure hope the two Voyagers keep chugging along without the need of our help for the next year or so.

When Voyager 2 Calls Home, Earth Soon Won’t Be Able to Answer

 

[SelfSim]

The DSN Now site shows which facility is communicating with which space asset in real time (which is kinda neat).

The Canberra (Tidbinbilla) earth station was talking to Voyager 2 at the time of my making this particular post.

 

[timewerx]

It's actually pretty amazing that computer and hardware technology launched in the late 1970's, is still operational in deep space, and it continues to provide us with important scientific data which would otherwise be inaccessible to us.

Back then, mad scientists programmed with machine language. And that's not a joke!

Machine language is the rad stuff. Complex operations can be done with little computer processing power. AI of the future would likely use the same old language to evolve itself without human help.

And of course, micro-drones.

 

[SelfSim]

Back then, mad scientists programmed with machine language. And that's not a joke!

Steady on there, fella!
Some of us are still around, alive and kicking! I built my own 'computer', (a microprocessor back then), wrote and ran 8 bit binary and even used hexadecimal for short-hand in binary arithmetic!

I even used to know how to do division and mulitplication sums using shift registers!

I'd say this would have been the same general schema which still runs the Voyagers today, what's more ..

 

[Johan_1988]

NASA's Voyager 2 makes triumphant return to interstellar science after glitch



It's actually pretty amazing that computer and hardware technology launched in the late 1970's, is still operational in deep space, and it continues to provide us with important scientific data which would otherwise be inaccessible to us.

It kinds reminds me of a popular song from that era.

I sure hope the two Voyagers keep chugging along without the need of our help for the next year or so.

When Voyager 2 Calls Home, Earth Soon Won’t Be Able to Answer

Voyagers computers were made of discrete TTL logic, magnetic core memory(RAM) and rope memory(ROM) and as well as early CMOS RAM chips. They were made in the micro scale and not in the nano scale like today, so they are very hardy and resistant to cosmic radiation. There are 6 computers on board and they are double redundant(backup for each 3 of the computers).

If you're a non believer the following won't make sense , but if you are a believer in Christ you should listen:

I think the music is inappropriate for a christian forum though. Music is spiritual and nature and reflects the spirituality of the person singing.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Steady on there, fella!
Some of us are still around, alive and kicking! I built my own 'computer', (a microprocessor back then), wrote and ran 8 bit binary and even used hexadecimal for short-hand in binary arithmetic!

I even used to know how to do division and mulitplication sums using shift registers!

I'd say this would have been the same general schema which still runs the Voyagers today, what's more ..

Ah, I remember those days... I built a Nascom II single-board computer (a lot of soldering!) and taught myself assembly programming by manually translating the Sargon II chess program from 6502 CPU assembler (published in softback book form) to Z80 CPU assembler... Writing the board display and keyboard interface was educational. IIRC I also added a 4kB(!) memory expansion board

 

[Michael]

Ah, I remember those days... I built a Nascom II single-board computer (a lot of soldering!) and taught myself assembly programming by manually translating the Sargon II chess program from 6502 CPU assembler (published in softback book form) to Z80 CPU assembler... Writing the board display and keyboard interface was educational. IIRC I also added a 4kB(!) memory expansion board

Wow, that's quite an accomplishment in assembly language. My first assembly language project was a small overlay program that resided in memory that allowed me to program "hotkeys" on my keyboard so I could be more efficient in a program called 'DECWARS', a multiplayer game on Compuserve. It worked great.

 

[SelfSim]

Ah, I remember those days... I built a Nascom II single-board computer (a lot of soldering!) and taught myself assembly programming by manually translating the Sargon II chess program from 6502 CPU assembler (published in softback book form) to Z80 CPU assembler... Writing the board display and keyboard interface was educational. IIRC I also added a 4kB(!) memory expansion board

I think mine predated yours(?) .. I started out building around one of these and programming it in binary by toggle switches I think (from memory) its clock ran at all of 1MHz and I built it with 8 red LEDs as its only display (I later added an ASCII serial output stream to talk to a screen monitor). I seem to recall it only had about 256 Bytes of RAM (doesn't seem right .. I'll have to check up on that ?!) I still have it what's more .. I reckon it'll be a collector's item someday.

I moved onto 6502s a little later on with a Synertek SYM 1 (1 MHz), which was much fancier. I added a Basic programming language ROM and a Resident Assembler/Editor (RAE). It started out with only 1KB RAM, (IIRC). Still have it also.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Wow, that's quite an accomplishment in assembly language. My first assembly language project was a small overlay program that resided in memory that allowed me to program "hotkeys" on my keyboard so I could be more efficient in a program called 'DECWARS', a multiplayer game on Compuserve. It worked great.

Yes, that's a good exercise to get into the I/O subsystem. I wrote a service called 'SoftKey' that would do that - you could program any key to output a character or a string of characters - the key handler is only about 35 bytes long. I've still got the code and the letter I wrote to submit it to some software magazine (Liverpool Software Gazette?) - although if I did, I don't think it was ever published!

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I think mine predated yours(?) .. I started out building around one of these and programming it in binary by toggle switches I think (from memory) its clock ran at all of 1MHz and I built it with 8 red LEDs as its only display (I later added an ASCII serial output stream to talk to a screen monitor). I seem to recall it only had about 256 Bytes of RAM (doesn't seem right .. I'll have to check up on that ?!) I still have it what's more .. I reckon it'll be a collector's item someday.

I moved onto 6502s a little later on with a Synertek SYM 1 (1 MHz), which was much fancier. I added a Basic programming language ROM and a Resident Assembler/Editor (RAE). It started out with only 1KB RAM, (IIRC). Still have it also.

I'd previously had an MK14 that used the SC/MP (scamp) chip too - yes, the basic thing was 256 bytes - it had a really crappy square plastic sheet keyboard using conductive foam, and the red LED display - you could make trivial games like ducks & geese (where you 'shoot' at shapes moving across the LEDs), but it was pretty rubbish and very limited - I wanted something that could display on a screen

 

[SelfSim]

I'd previously had an MK14 that used the SC/MP (scamp) chip too - yes, the basic thing was 256 bytes - it had a really crappy square plastic sheet keyboard using conductive foam, and the red LED display - you could make trivial games like ducks & geese (where you 'shoot' at shapes moving across the LEDs), but it was pretty rubbish and very limited - I wanted something that could display on a screen

Ha!
Not trying to make this some dumb one-upmanship thread or anything .. (more like a trip down memory lane) .. but my obsessions in this department go back even further and started out with a Christmas present of the mighty Philips Electronic Engineer kit. I just had to know how those gizmos in the little boxes worked .. which led onto many later life choices. Its amazing how all that happened .. starting out from such a young age!

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Ha!
Not trying to make this some dumb one-upmanship thread or anything .. (more like a trip down memory lane) .. but my obsessions in this department go back even further and started out with a Christmas present of the mighty Philips Electronic Engineer kit. I just had to know how those gizmos in the little boxes worked .. which led onto many later life choices. Its amazing how all that happened .. starting out from such a young age!

Trip down memory lane

I remember seeing those Philips kits - don't think I ever had one (probably nagged the folks for one!), but I did have a little radio kit with a ferrite rod and a coil of wire, an earpiece like a hearing aid, and a few electronic bits... I also assembled a Sinclair Pocket Radio ('Transistor radio the size of a matchbox!').

You could get hundreds of millions of those on a single chip now... but where's the fun in that?

Up to then most of my nagging involved Meccano.

 

[SelfSim]

Trip down memory lane

I remember seeing those Philips kits - don't think I ever had one (probably nagged the folks for one!), but I did have a little radio kit with a ferrite rod and a coil of wire, an earpiece like a hearing aid, and a few electronic bits... I also assembled a Sinclair Pocket Radio ('Transistor radio the size of a matchbox!').

You could get hundreds of millions of those on a single chip now... but where's the fun in that?

Up to then most of my nagging involved Meccano.

Meccano? Do ya mean like this one?: (A few pieces missing and in a pretty sorry state for such an antique! ):
(Always wanted one of those Sinclar matchbox radios, too .. never got one though).

 

[SelfSim]

.. and in keeping with the Science Forum theme of "Don't just believe what I say" (is that a science forum theme?):

 

[SelfSim]

I was reformed.
Between the Philips and the Meccano kits, I developed weapons designed to torment and torture unwilling victims .. so I wound my own super-duper electromagnet (complete with a retractable ferrite rod .. to maximise the effect) and drove it with a make-and-break buzzer connected to a 1.5 battery.

The end result would have to be almost juvenile criminal charges of outright electrocution!:

 

[sjastro]

Heck my claim to fame was building an oscillator circuit as a bug repellent using a Dick Smith Electronics kit.
When I powered it up it exploded with the realisation my calling was in the Sciences and not Electronics.

 

[Thomas White]

Voyagers computers were made of discrete TTL logic, magnetic core memory(RAM) and rope memory(ROM) and as well as early CMOS RAM chips. They were made in the micro scale and not in the nano scale like today, so they are very hardy and resistant to cosmic radiation. There are 6 computers on board and they are double redundant(backup for each 3 of the computers).

If you're a non believer the following won't make sense , but if you are a believer in Christ you should listen:

I think the music is inappropriate for a christian forum though. Music is spiritual and nature and reflects the spirituality of the person singing.

From all that, you got that the music is inappropriate?

 

[Bob Crowley]

What amazes me is that the signal is strong enough for the radio stations to be able to pick it up. They're supposed to be around 18 billion kilometres away.

I lifted this off the following site - How Does NASA Communicate With Spacecraft? | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids

Because the Voyagers are so far away, their signals to the antennas are very weak. In fact, the power that the DSN antennas receive from the Voyager signals is 20 billion times weaker than what is needed to run a digital watch! Engineers have figured out ways to boost those signals so they can be “heard” loud and clear.

 

[Johan_1988]

From all that, you got that the music is inappropriate?

I commented on the first topic that was about voyager 2 and then on the video after that.

Voyager and the video are 2 different things.That's why I commented on 2 different things.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Meccano? Do ya mean like this one?: (A few pieces missing and in a pretty sorry state for such an antique! ):

Yes, that's the stuff, but a bit bigger - I can remember building the models from outfit No.5, 5.1 to 5.5 and 5.9 to 5.12. Too many models required you to bend parts so they couldn't be used again. I always wanted the next outfit up, but there came a point where I think my dad - who was keen on education and skills, and could probably afford to indulge me, realised that by the time I got to grips with anything bigger, my interests would have (should have) moved on to girls or sport... which they did

For the sake of completeness, the remains of my old Nascom II - unsalvageable I think - sentimental value only...