• @[email protected]
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    7 months ago

    Is it possible that cosmic rays beyond the heliopause have damaged (bit-flipped) the radiation-hardened circuitry on board the spacecraft? That might cause it to start jibbering nonsense.

    • @[email protected]
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      67 months ago

      There are a number of possibilities. We likely will never know what actually happened. A bit flip would be bad, but potentially fixable. If they can somehow force a reset. It could also be simple component failure, a bad capacitor, in the wrong place, and your computer goes haywire. Ditto for mechanical damage. A grain of dust, hitting the wrong point could cause a cascade of problems.

      The backup systems are long dead. The fact they’ve managed to extend the mission life by 41 years is quite incredible. It was never expected to last this long.

      God speed V’ger!

    • Talaraine
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      -167 months ago

      That’s very likely what happened. The problem is that the control board that manages communications is so old that nobody can find any documentation on how it works, so they can’t even begin to figure out a fix.

      Everyone involved with that project is also probably dead.

      • @[email protected]
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        417 months ago

        Everyone involved with that project is also probably dead.

        Literally, the FIRST sentence of the article is talking about someone who’s been involved with Voyager I from the start. Yes, the project has outlasted many of it’s original engineers, but to say, “Everyone involved with that project is also probably dead,” for a major mission that launched 46 years ago is obviously untrue.

          • @0x0
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            187 months ago

            Guess you missed the article entirely.

              • @[email protected]
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                47 months ago

                You’re literally just wrong. Suck it up and move on. Nobody’s even cared enough to respond twice.

              • @[email protected]
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                -17 months ago

                People are really touchy today, don’t take it personally. Remember that how someone treats you is almost always a projection of themself.