
Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years - colanderman
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/voyager-1-fires-up-thrusters-after-37
======
dschuler
The article mentions the thrusters used are the Aerojet Rocketdyne MR-103 [0].
They look pretty delicate, but only need to provide about 1N of thrust.
Visually I was expecting something like the MR-107S in the same datasheet.

I ended up getting voyager "golden record" LPs for a friend's bday [1], which
was a pretty neat present. Turns out her bf's uncle produced one of those
records in the 90's.

[0]
[http://www.rocket.com/files/aerojet/documents/Capabilities/P...](http://www.rocket.com/files/aerojet/documents/Capabilities/PDFs/Monopropellant%20Data%20Sheets.pdf)

[1] [http://www.ozmarecords.com/product/voyager-golden-
record-3xl...](http://www.ozmarecords.com/product/voyager-golden-record-3xlp-
box-set)

~~~
asciimo
Here's a photo album of producing the original golden record, followed by its
visual contents. [https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa-
jpl/sets/7215767618791618...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa-
jpl/sets/72157676187916186/)

~~~
dandare
I would love to read a story about aliens finding the records and trying to
decode them. Personally, I find the image encoding impossible to understand.

~~~
jvm_
There was a reddit post today showing the picture of the naked humans and the
quasar map to earth... the caption was - maybe the reason aliens haven't
contacted us is that we sent unsolicited nudes and directions to our house.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Googled, but couldn't find the cartoon that showed an alien family (looking
every bit like Ward Cleaver's family) looking at the Pioneer plaque while one
of the alien children says, "They look like us except they don't wear any
clothes."

Maybe an old Scientific American or issue of OMNI magazine....

------
asciimo
From the Voyager FAQ ([https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-
questions/](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/))

Even if science data won't likely be collected after 2025, engineering data
could continue to be returned for several more years. The two Voyager
spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about
2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a
signal back to Earth.

~~~
burnte
They'll definitely keep collecting science data until it no longer transmits.
They keep closing in on ending data collection and then scrounge up funding.
It's a human milestone, we'll listen until the end. That said, when the
digital world ends in 2038 it'll be moot anyway, but we'll record our stellar
wanderer's name on stone tablets.

~~~
solarkraft
Luckily the Voyager software is not vulnerable (& can be remotely updated).

------
okket
See also previous discussion from 3 months ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827369)
(260 comments)

------
lucb1e
Posts like these are fascinating, but constant comments like these just take
me entirely out of the story:

> [far away from earth,] there's no mechanic shop nearby to get a tune-up.

Did someone from marketing write this to dumb it down or something? It seems
so random when two sentences down they talk about milliseconds and assembler
language without explaining the terms.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
I found this kind of odd and distracting too. You either go full nerd or no
nerd, not half and half.

------
biot
_”Voyager 2 is also on course to enter interstellar space, likely within the
next few years.”_

Is the lack of precision on the date because they don’t know precisely where
the boundary of interstellar space is?

~~~
codewritinfool
Yes. This is based on Voyager 1's heliopause exit back in 2012 at 121 AU. It
is presently at about 141 AU.

Voyager 2 is at at about 117 AU now.

The uncertainty in "the next few years" statement is because of the assumption
is that the heliopause will occur at roughly the same distance that Voyager 1
found it at.

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Theodores
Whomever collects this piece of 'space junk' in the far distant future would
be puzzled how that every power source had been eeked out and used, with no
remaining systems functional they will wonder how it got to that state. To
them it will be like one of those bicycles that has no brakes, a couple of
punctures and no working gears - how did it get there, what broke first?

~~~
jstanley
Anybody who can come up with a method of "collecting" it that doesn't smash it
into millions of unidentifiable tiny pieces is probably smart enough to figure
out the rest!

------
DrScump
(December 2017)

Original submittal, 740+ points:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827369)

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mehrdadn
Obligatory :) [https://xkcd.com/1189/](https://xkcd.com/1189/)

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swasheck
Neat timing on this resubmit. I just watched The Farthest on a flight this
week. It's a neat movie that gives interesting (and human) context to the
mission and those who executed it. I'd definitely recommend it as a watch for
anyone even nominally interested in space exploration.

------
reeteshv
This article piqued my interest in Aerojet!

Reading the Wikipedia entry, I was stuck by how the founders list control of
their firm, "Unhappily for us, no bank would lend us money; bankers hadn’t yet
come to think of rocketry as a stable business."

Interestingly, a tire company acquired majority control!

~~~
codemogul
So, if you are ever in Miami, you can take a 45 minute drive down to their old
facility at the edge of the Everglades in Homestead. Bring/rent a mountain
bike because the last 2 miles are closed road. Great place to run.

Even cooler, there is still a test missile in a silo in one of the remaining
structures. There is all sorts of interesting rusting hulks out there.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerojet#Florida_facility_and_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerojet#Florida_facility_and_canal)

[2] [http://www.abandonedfl.com/aerojet-
dade/](http://www.abandonedfl.com/aerojet-dade/)

------
codewritinfool
"that was coded in an outdated assembler language" LOL, that's just a sad
statement.

~~~
codewritinfool
Can anyone explain to me why is this being downvoted? I have coded in assembly
since the 1970's and still do today. It is essential for some tasks and when
these spacecraft were designed, it was the obvious choice. I just don't
understand why NASA would call it "outdated".

~~~
kakwa_
Maybe because they have less and less people who know how to read and program
with this particular assembly language?

The program was written more than 40 years ago, most of the people who wrote
it are probably retired now.

Also, it's not a "mainstream but old CPU" like a Z80 or a 6502, given the
constrains of a space probe it's probably more a custom thing developped
specifically for these (kinds of) missions.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
How old do you have to be to be retired en mass? I'm in my early 50s, first
assembler was 6502, second s/370\. I'm going strong as a dev. That was a
misleading comment "outdated assembly language", but assembly is less common
than in the past.

~~~
codewritinfool
Thank you. I was beginning to feel old. I am also in my early fifties. I spent
a long time with PPS-4, 8080, Z80, 6809, 8051, and many others. These days I
work primarily with Microchip PICs, and still program in assembly fairly
often.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
I never use assembly these days, it's all C++ and before that Java. The only
assembly I see is in the debugger and I occasionally look at it and is that
left to right or right to left on x86 :-) Let's see, the best assembly was
s/370, right? I am pretty sure the destination was on the left. and on x86,
does it move right? They got everything else wrong on it :-)

------
userbinator
This reminds me of those many YouTube vidoes showing extremely old machinery
such as cars being started after many decades of inactivity. There's a certain
indescribable feeling when something like this happens.

------
dwighttk
(2017)

------
guhcampos
And yet my phone can't last three full years.

~~~
dorgo
Your phone will be outdated and replaced in three years. Hard to replace a
probe in space. For this reason it is a good idea to design phones to last 3
years and space probs to last decades.

------
rootbear
I've seen this article mentioned on several sites. The title is terrible,
misleading clickbait that seem to indicate that the Voyager 1 has been
unresponsive for 37 years. What nonsense! This is really about how NASA found
they could use a set of thrusters that had been idle for 37 years. A much
better discussion can be found at this NASA page:

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/voyager-1-fires-up-
thruster...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/voyager-1-fires-up-thrusters-
after-37)

~~~
colanderman
Thanks, I've edited the title to match NASA's. (Can't change the URL though.)

~~~
rootbear
Excellent. It's a great story about how amazing the Voyager spacecraft are and
I'm glad to see it getting a lot of attention, even with click-bait titles!

