The Only Reason the Voyager Probes are Still Working Today

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#voyager #nasa #astrum

voyager 2, voyager 1, tape recorder, deep space network

[RetroGamerr]

The fact that Voyager outlived every congressman that approved funding for the voyager mission is a testament to how well these things were designed.

[therickson]

An item not mentioned: The reason the probes can still be heard is that there have been huge advances in the receivers used for communication. A very important part of this amazing journey has been work done here on Earth to improve the equipment used to communicate with the space probes.

[horsenuts]

Voyager took off barely 75 years after the Wright Brothers managed to stay airborne. My Grandmother was born in the same year that the Wright Brothers took to the air. It is quite incredible what has been achieved.

[tombraiderstrums]

When we lose contact with the Voyagers I will probably cry. What good friends to humanity they have been.

[dimbulb]

At 12 I saw Sputnik 2 tumble and flash across the sky. At 19, I serviced supersonic fighter avionics, at 23 started working for IBM installing, troubleshooting and fixing computers in the era of core memory and punch cards. In '75 it was OS code troubleshooting, in '85 I was writing OS code for PCs. And now, long retired, my FitBit has more computing power than flew on any Apollo mission. What a trip, it has been. My paternal grandparents were born before the American Civl War began, they lived on a farm without electricity or plumbing, she died in 1904 and never rode in a car. My grandfather, i met when I was 2. He could read, my father born in 1895. He never learned to read and worked in coal mines in the era before dynamite, black powder when the miners work headlamps with open an flame and mules were used to pull coal from the mine. And I'm going to build a couple of PCs this year but I seriously thinking of just buying them. What crazy, wonderful era in which to live.

[debbiesimmons]

My dad built the Voyagers. He died early 2010 so he missed seeing all the excitement about them leaving the solar system . He built lots of space faring vehicles as well as many other important technologies. Most people in the world would have used something that he developed.

[myyklmax]

One of the advantages of Voyager's base programming being on magnetic discs, it that even if Voyager goes into standby due to reduction or lack of communication with Earth, once the connection to Earth is retored, Voyagers can reboot itself from its onboard data discs.

[benyomovod]

Engineers had a say, not beancounters.
That simple

[Yaivenov]

That the memory deck still works is probably the most amazing mechanical aspect of the Voyagers.

[PointyTailofSatan]

You should have mentioned the RAM. 48k of plated wire memory, a technology that was already 15 years obsolete when Voyager was launched. On the good side though, the memory junctions are so huge, compared to modern TTL based memory, that the plated wire memory is almost indestructible, and immune to damage or data corruption from cosmic radiation.

[joep]

Meanwhile, my refrigerator's broken again.

[kirstenb]

My grandfather worked at JPL and on the Voyager project. I recall receiving photos before they were released to the public (still have some of them). His part was with the antennae sending receiving of radio waves (not sure if it was the earth or voyager side). Some of that technology is what makes cell phone communication possible. It's so wonderful to see that the voyagers continue.

[deborahchesser]

In my opinion, the Voyager program was the most ambitious and well executed effort we ever made for space exploration. And after all, they are still functioning almost 47 years later, absolutely amazing !

[Mlogan]

Hats off to the scientists and engineers that helped create these amazing machines.

[jamesberlo]

So unbelievable, I remember this when I was 16 years old being very poor and living in a Boston Housing Project watching on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show just before they were Launched, it gave me a diversion from life and was so exciting (and unbelievable) no way imagining they would still be operational or still traveling, they were supposed to end a long time ago and people didn't think they would even last or survive as long as planned.

[deaks]

The Voyager probes are the genesis of my fascination with space, engineering and probably even sci-fi. For many of my generation it was the Space Shuttle, but for me it was these already 15-year old probes that grabbed me. And for all the incredible missions we conduct today, the two old probes still add their contributions to scientific discovery even now.
It sounds weird even to me but I will genuinely shed a tear when their power reserves drop to the level where they are put into hibernation.
For me, they rank as one of the greatest achievements of human kind, and I would make a case for them to rank as the greatest.

[hidel]

Many don’t know that at the last minute they realized that they needed radiation shielding for the instruments. It was feared that Jupiter’s radiation would cause systems to fail. So the engineers hit up every local supermarket and bought up all the aluminum foil they could get. They cleaned and prepped it, then installed it. So, the Voyagers are cruising the cosmos with grocery store shielding. 😊

[SeaWolfEntertainment]

My uncle was just two years out of college when he went to work for JPL. Has his degree in metallurgy with a minor in computer science. Voyager 1 was already in space when my uncle was asked to join the team to troubleshoot some problems (I don’t know exactly what problems he was troubleshooting). My uncle worked as a metallurgist for 45 years at JPL and has worked on every unmanned space probe that JPL has sent to space.

Fun fact the first voyager launched was given the name voyager 2 while the second voyager was given the name voyager 1. Reason: the math hippies did there math and said that the second voyager launched aka voyager 1 would be traveling faster and would be the first man made object to go interstellar.

[stevendimmock]

For me the saddest thing is that I have been following the Voyagers most of my life, ( I'm nearly 64 years old) and if all goes well, I probably won't see the end of their travels. But what an amazing journey to go so far and still be in touch with us. You really can say 'Wow!!'

[geoffschulz]

7:57 My father, Gordon Schulz, was one of the founders of Odetics and he designed the transport mechanism for that 8 track DTR.