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NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
(blogs.nasa.gov)
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this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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Didn't the small amount of memory they had just completely stop working? I'd love to see or hear how they managed to reprogram this damn thing and make it work again. Amazing.
It did die- one specific chip carrying the code for packaging the data for transmittal died. They kind of described it in this article. So they are now partitioning out the memory left in other parts of the computer system and copying small portions of the packaging code into those other memory blocks so it can still be successfully run.
The fact that any electronic component on this probe still works is just freaking wild.
I'm curious as to what would make them stop working anyway. It's in space; no air, no moisture, no bugs, no dirt... Unless it hit something/something hit it, I don't understand how things would degrade in it unless it's just the expansion and contraction of things as they heat and cool from the electricity running through it. But wouldn't that take way, way longer? Is it just the components used at the time not being very good for longevity? It's not using vacuum tubes or things of that nature is it?
Cosmic rays. Wikipedia entry