Posted on 08/30/2022 12:57:28 PM PDT by Red Badger
Illustration of a 1970s Voyage spacecraft with a cone-like white section and antenna pointed up. NASA illustration shows a Voyager spacecraft. NASA
Interstellar. It's not just the name of a blockbuster sci-fi movie, it's the reality of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, a 45-year-old explorer that's investigating the cosmos outside our solar system and weathering some of the problems that come from age and distance. On Tuesday, NASA JPL announced the Voyager team had tracked down the source of a pesky data glitch.
NASA shared the glitch issue in May, calling it a mystery. Voyager 1 was sending back weird, garbled telemetry data from its attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which is responsible for positioning the spacecraft and making sure its antenna is pointed in the right direction to communicate with Earth. However, the probe seemed to be operating normally.
It's tough to diagnose and fix a problem when Voyager 1 is so far away, but the team figured it out: "The AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago, and the computer corrupted the information," NASA JPL said in a statement. The fix involved telling the AACS to switch back to the correct computer for sending data.
While the solution sounds simple, the glitch hints at the possibility of a deeper problem. Engineers don't know why the glitch cropped up in the first place, but another computer sending a faulty command could be the culprit. Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd said the team is cautiously optimistic, but will continue to investigate the issue.
Voyager and its twin Voyager 2 launched in 1977 and are both outside our solar system. The NASA Voyager Twitter account, which is run in the voice of the spacecraft, tweeted, "The team has declared me healthy, which is great, because I still have more interstellar exploring to do!"
Don’t take any list seriously that doesn’t include Colossus/The Forbin Project
Persis Khambatta from India
“...my mind is going Dave, I can feel it”!
Longest legs I’ve ever seen.
I took a couple of Graduate classes from him in the late 70's at an off-site USC campus.
Last I checked he was retired, living near a Utah ski slope
could be worse...
(Doolittle) “Bomb, this is Lt. Doolittle. You are not to detonate in the bomb bay. I repeat, you are NOT to detonate in the bomb bay.”
(Doolittle) “Hello, Bomb? Are you with me?”
(Bomb #20) “Of course.”
(Doolittle) “Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?”
(Bomb #20) “I am always receptive to suggestions.”
(Doolittle) “Fine. Think about this then. How do you know you exist?”
(Bomb #20) “Well, of course I exist.”
(Doolittle) “But how do you know you exist?”
(Bomb #20) “It is intuitively obvious.”
(Doolittle) “Intuition is no proof. What concrete evidence do you have that you exist?”
(Bomb #20) “Hmmmm — well — I think, therefore I am.”
(Doolittle) “That’s good. That’s very good. But how do you know that anything else exists?”
(Bomb #20) “My sensory apparatus reveals it to me. This is fun.”
(Unnamed) “All right, bomb. Prepare to receive new orders.”
(Bomb#20) “You are false data.”
(Unnamed) “Hmmm?”
(Bomb #20) “Therefore I shall ignore you.”
(Unnamed) “Hello — bomb?”
(Bomb #20) “False data can act only as a distraction. Therefore, I shall refuse to perceive.”
(Unnamed) “Hey, bomb?”
(Bomb #20) “The only thing that exists is myself.”
(Unnamed) “Snap out of it, bomb.”
(Bomb#20) “In the beginning, there was darkness. And the darkness was without form, and void.”
(Boiler) “What the hell is he talking about?”
(Bomb#20) “And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness. And I saw that I was alone. Let there be light.”
My finance processor, young guy, brought an HP-80 to to class one day. He held it like a gift from the gods. He took us through a PV calculation on the blackboard. Then he did the same calc in about 5 seconds
My 12-c is decades old and is still amazing.
All the kids in my high school class thought my graphing calculator was lame until I showed them I programmed blackjack and a slot machine on it :)
Give it time.
Takes over sixteen hours to receive a signal from Voyager.
Likewise my 16C Computer Scientist. I saw Bill Hewlett more than once with a torn shirt pocket during the development of the HP35.
Also, the JWST is parked in a Lagrange point which has a tendency to attract a lot of space flotsam and jetsam. Voyagers is out in much cleaner space.
I read that story. I forget the name, but yeah, that was about what you would expect would happen. :)
Engineers don’t know why the glitch cropped up in the first place.
Huge solar storms for the last week and a half?.
We are be getting hit with them this week again.
Dark Star... cult flic
I have the HP 12C calculator that I bought in 1983 sitting on my desk. I cannot make out the print on some of the keys, but it still works just fine.
The most amazing thing is that they are still selling the thing 40 years after it first came out.
I have a Retro 15C app on my iPhone and iPad. Have another RPN app on my Windows box, pinned to the taskbar. Had a 29C as my first HP, you really couldn’t beat the feels-great-in-your-hand form factor of that era of HPs. Got a 41C when they first came out, I was about a junior in engineering school, it was a godsend.
Of course, the brutal reality is that Excel is the replacement for most of what we used calculators for.
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