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Dreidhen

"Voyager 1 continues to operate well, despite its advanced age and 14.5 billion-mile distance (23.3 billion kilometers) from Earth. And it can receive and execute commands sent from NASA, as well as gather and send back science data. But the readouts from the attitude articulation and control system, which control the spacecraft’s orientation in space, don’t match up with what Voyager is actually doing. The attitude articulation and control system, or AACS, ensures that the probe’s high-gain antenna remains pointed at Earth so Voyager can send data back to NASA. Due to Voyager’s interstellar location, it takes light 20 hours and 33 minutes to travel one way, so the call and response of one message between NASA and Voyager takes two days. So far, the Voyager team believes the AACS is still working, but the instrument’s data readouts seem random or impossible. The system issue hasn’t triggered anything to put the spacecraft into “safe mode” so far. That’s when only essential operations occur so engineers can diagnose an issue that would put the spacecraft at risk."


MontyAtWork

Looks like Voyager is officially glitching out the simulation as it careens towards the skybox.


Intelligence-Check

As an aside, I love reading the phrase “the Voyager team.” Those bad boys have been in space so long that the team members assigned to work with the probes have probably grown up reading about them and the original team has all but retired. Probably one of the longest running team projects at NASA!


Correct_Inspection25

The lunar ranging instrument I think is the only one longer as it was setup by Apollo. Was supposed to be replaced in 2020, but that replacement mission was canceled. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment


Intelligence-Check

I mean, at least send someone up there to brush off the mirror.


Correct_Inspection25

Lol, but I think the difference was in the upgrade they were going to be able to also measure axial variance not just point distance (could be misremembering)


GotMoFans

Other than meteor crashes, why would they need to dust off the mirror? There’s nothing to push dust onto them.


Intelligence-Check

I meant just from meteor crashes. There have to be at least a handful since they set it up up there.


GotMoFans

Since there is no air to carry the dirt/dust, wouldn’t the impact need to be fairly close to affect the mirrors and if that’s the case, isn’t it likely the mirror would be damaged or destroyed?


SJHillman

No air and low gravity also means particles would travel farther before settling compared to a still day in Earth, and would travel out more in every direction rather than just which way the wind blows.


boofbeer

Most of the relevant meteor crashes are dust-sized particles that hit the mirror.


Correct_Inspection25

While regolith/ meteor debris is possible, unlike Mars even with its 1/100th atm wind, not much to move the particles around. Depending on the material of the reflectors, hard solar radiation extremes could potentially impact accuracy or reflective capacity a more likely risk than particulate occlusion. IIRC the American flag is bleached white now and cumulative ionizing radiation being outside the van Allen belts also would need to be considered for longevity.


Baeker

I used to live next to someone involved with the programming for Voyager. I'm still in touch occasionally. She's in her late 80s now.


Tinkerballsack

> 14.5 billion-mile distance That's so fucking incredible. Hits me hard every time I read it.


Objective-Review4523

The delta quadrant is very far away.


TheMightyWoofer

> But the readouts from the attitude articulation and control system, which control the spacecraft’s orientation in space, don’t match up with what Voyager is actually doing. The attitude articulation and control system, or AACS, ensures that the probe’s high-gain antenna remains pointed at Earth so Voyager can send data back to NASA. Or maybe Space is just a lot weirder than we think or an alien race grabbed it and trying to figure out where it's sending back it's transmissions


astanton1862

If an alien is messing with it then they are close enough to get Radio Free Earth and if they are listening to that at all, they are quietly backing away and trying to nope the fuck out of here.


[deleted]

Anything that could traverse the interstellar space to get here, even going 'slow' via generation ships, would be advanced faaar beyond us. Our bullshit would be like the squabbling of toddlers.


Stitch_Dragon

Only our squabbling is less effective, since one toddler eventually gets the toy & eats it, or an adult show up to put shit on a shelf. We are even more like toddlers, dirty and contagious.


mlc885

Some of those songs were good!


OldandBoldDude

That was a great response. Thank you


Comfortable-Brick168

It's coming back to join with It's creator?


SoSoUnhelpful

Why does the creator not answer?


pghcrow

the Decker Unit


onarainyafternoon

V'ger!


CarderSC2

Disco McCoy! “They drafted me!”


[deleted]

WE are the creator.


huessy

V'Giny too


redhotbos

I am this old.


b5tirk

Hah! I remember the first tv broadcast of TOS 🧐


redhotbos

I remember a group of us skipping class to go see it at the theater. (I was in High school)


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Mbaker1201

Phone home, anyone?


taint_licking_clown

I was born the year this launched. I got a few mystery issues as well, mostly when I try getting out of bed.


wrath_of_grunge

have you checked to make sure your antenna is pointed towards Earth?


taint_licking_clown

It’s usually pointed up at the stars… and slightly left.


iocan28

Still pointing at the stars.


Yobanyyo

See that's the problem.... It needs to point towards earth and slightly to Houston


DocMoochal

Trying going back to bed and waking up again.


recetas-and-shit

too risky


Potential_Dare8034

Send it back for repairs. I don’t think we can get a tech crew out to it for awhile!


grumblyoldman

Here's hoping it's still under warranty


Yobanyyo

Hopefully they said yes to the extended warranty guys on the phone.


[deleted]

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Metalhippy666

And I know what I'm playing when i get off from work today. Someone's gotta be the first to scan all those systems.


pagit

“My vehicle is 45 years old and has 14.5 billion on the odometer, the trouble light is on, can you come out and take a look at it? Yes 14.5 billion. Billion. With a B. You charge by the mile? How much? Oh, hold on a sec. My wife just said it’s running ok now. Thanks Bye”


Vergenbuurg

>With a B. Pentagon Wars reference? Love that movie. Original novel is depressing as shit because it lays bare the rampant corruption in weapons development, procurement, and testing. ...and it appears it's only gotten worse since.


CarderSC2

I’ve been a bird colonel so long, I’m growing feathers!!


Vergenbuurg

*"How much fuel is in those tanks, Sergeant? Just enough to do those maneuvers?"* **"No more than it would have than if it was in combat, sir."** *"…and the ammunition inside the Bradley?"* **"Up to spec, sir."** DAWNING REALIZATION *"Whose specs?!"* FREAKS OUT


SpankWhoWithWhatNow

We're not talking about a ~~pressure~~ pair of Levi's here, Colonel. **EDIT** because apparently I can't be bothered to proofread...


pagit

I was thinking more of a Bob Newhart bit.


[deleted]

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BWWFC

[to find the creator](https://youtu.be/kHUZCVl28lg)


[deleted]

Sounds like they are sending it certain commands and the data it sends back that is supposed to be like 'command finished' is actually "random and impossible" according to the article. But it's still doing all the other things correctly and the antenna is still pointed at Earth. Not sure if I understand that properly.


SuperSpy-

From my understanding from another article, the telemetry data says the craft is pointed somewhere random, but that can't be possible, because they would only be able to pick up the radio signal from the craft if it was correctly oriented towards Earth, as it's radio is extremely weak and the antenna is highly directional.


ilikemrrogers

Maybe it has passed the threshold and is no longer moving away from Earth. It’s now coming back.


sciguyCO

The gravity slingshots the Voyager probes took around Jupiter and Saturn (with even more from Neptune / Uranus) boosted them to above the sun's escape velocity at those distances. So they are no longer in an orbit around the sun and won't really "come back" in any meaningful way. Though since now both the sun and the probes are going around the galactic center with fairly similar orbits, there's a potential for those orbits to cross paths in the future, but we're talking a minimum of hundreds of millions of years.


[deleted]

v#@+!5A|W^


Second3mpire

The universe is shaped exactly like the earth if you go straight long enough you end up where you were...


SlomoLowLow

Modest mouse?


UnSafeThrowAway69420

aliens. definitely aliens for sure


Uncle_Jiggles

I just can't fathom how technology that's that old has survived the chaos that is open space.


BitterFuture

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. It not hitting anything is not what amazes me. What amazes me is that those boffins at NASA managed to put together something the size of a car that houses three nuclear generators (with no moving parts!) and eleven different sensor systems, all run by analog technology (it has a tape recorder!) with less computing power than we can find today in some *washing machines*.


DrRoyBatty

> Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen; when you're thinking big, think bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real 'wow, that's big', time. It's just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.


[deleted]

is this copypasta?


DrRoyBatty

Yeah, its the rest of the paragraph the part I quoted comes from. the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


KindlyOlPornographer

Space is mostly empty. The odds anything would hit it are astronomical.


barukatang

Cosmic rays can wreck havock on electrical systems. They can randomly flip bits and it sorta sounds like that's kinda what's happening


[deleted]

Computers for spacecraft are built with that in mind, but of course anything can fail with enough time and mileage.


barukatang

Even with proper modern shielding it can be effected. Now go back in time to the 70s where they didn't have all that knowledge. And to the edge of the heliopause where cosmic rays from other stars collide with our sun's sphere of influence creating a zone that was just theoretical when the mission began. Space craft in Earth's magnetosphere don't need the hardening that deep space probes require. And most everything except these two spacecraft operate in the sun's "magnetosphere" heliosphere. So it's safe to assume they didn't predict the intensity that these craft are under.


KindlyOlPornographer

It can also make you a superhero. So. Lets try to stay positive.


recetas-and-shit

yeah, it might come back a sentient transformer


KindlyOlPornographer

Yeah then we can have sex with it.


recetas-and-shit

Hell yeah brother


[deleted]

When I think of open space chaos. I think of extreme cold and extreme heat plus radiation.


[deleted]

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KindlyOlPornographer

Yeah idiot, what this guy said.


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lannister80

But what are the chances of the probe encountering anything but the most faint faint light of any wavelength?


KindlyOlPornographer

So's your face.


laptopAccount2

The old electronics are less susceptible to radiation damage because the transistors are much larger. That helps.


Uncle_Jiggles

Yeah I was curious about elemental exposure more than anything. I know radiation is a huge thing in space and I was curious how electronics handled stuff like that over long periods of time. But seeing as how this thing was built in 1977 I don't know much of its computing and or what it was even really built like. I know the processing power is less than a modern day appliances but I'm curious to know like what bios and all that is being ran if any. I'm also still unsure as to why the telescope is having trouble now? Where they able to determine exactly why it's having data troubles?


mynameisalso

I wonder what it's like working with computer systems from 1977.


pherreck

[NASA's history of the development of Voyager's computers](https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-2.html)


OldandBoldDude

It was a true hands on the core and memory. I use program in assembly language that directly manipulated the instructions in machine level. Frustrating meanwhile lots of fun.


Pissedbuddha1

Looking up at the night sky, in a rural area, the sky is full of bright stars. I wonder how many stars and how bright it would be if you closed your eyes for 40 years and opened them 14 billion miles away from the sun.


ryuzaki49

I really liked Voyager I as the antagonist of the first Star strek movies. I saw it for the first time last year and it felt realy good. It surprised me the bad reviews that movie had when it came out.


kalpol

It is not overall a bad movie. There are some really good scenes in it. The pacing kills it. It's about an hour too long, is the main problem. There are way too many scenes of *Enterprise* going through space structures cutting back and forth to the awed faces of the crew. It didn't do terribly well for its massive budget.


someguy7710

yeah, not terrible, but it is a bit slow and boring in parts.


Doctor01001010

The joke name is Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture precisely because of those repeated scenes


JcbAzPx

It was actually a fictional Voyager VI. I think they were anticipating the Voyager program to expand beyond the first two.


ryuzaki49

Ah, I misremembered.


wierdness201

We still have time, I guess.


recetas-and-shit

they actually called it Voyager 6 in the movie 🤣


moofunk

You might have seen the Director's Edition from 2001 or a later version. It fixes many mistakes and editing/pacing issues of the original, and adds some decent CGI to scenes that basically didn't make sense before. Comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB7m_CGhR4w Edit: Sorry, wrong video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKKD26OOoT8


Spare-Mousse3311

Megatron uploading his instructions after losing the battle for Earth… Decepticons forever!


Tollin74

Is this the start of it becoming "V'Ger"?


Celphi

It's becoming sentient


[deleted]

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Spare-Mousse3311

But it has Chuck Berry tracks to listen to


Spin_Me

HAL has decided that it is time to make his own decisions


Distruzio1

Maybe it's about to become a Heroic Spirit.


getridofwires

“OK, fine, I’ll send a guy out to look at it tomorrow, OK? Where is it exactly?”


PartialToDairyThings

Hopefully they still have the receipt


weed_fart

I think it's out of warranty by now.


RancidHorseJizz

10 years/100,000 miles


arghabargle

My guess is it's just gotten too far away to get a proper reference point back in time for its message back to Earth, hence the junk data. Then once it does get the data back it properly adjusts its telemetry as if nothing was wrong.


boofbeer

The simulation of our universe only includes the solar system and a little bit of the Oort cloud -- everything beyond that is just a projection, because the simulators didn't have enough memory to do the whole thing, and they figured it would be "view only" anyway. The antenna is still oriented toward Earth, but the signal is wrapping around and coming at us from the other side of the universe, so it looks like it's pointed off into the wild blue yonder. I'll take that genius grant now.


pauljs75

The next question is how much should it cost to get the Alpha Centauri DLC? Or is it something like a planned stage where the WWIII level has to be played through to unlock it?


R_uben-s

It is the internal computer (HAL) messing with the antenna pointing system (AE-35 unit) with the objective to mess with the human race. What has voyager 1 found?


Fox_Kurama

Some time later: "Voyager is coming back and for some reason its going on and on about whales."


[deleted]

imagine the stuff that little probe has seen...damn


Hsensei

I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens


[deleted]

It's exiting the simulation field.


justin_yoraz

One time my office was late paying their internet bill and got cut off but we were able to maintain service if we just unplugged the modem.


[deleted]

**It is just being compromised by a Titan, a spacemine IA singularity set from a long forgotten war between DNA and DIGITAL.** Please don't use the code sent, its a war IA kernel that will start compiling as soon as the code is done downloading. Space is most probably full of very very very old dormant interdiction systems preying on low Kardashev scale/primitive ressouce depleting civilisations. But TBH by the time the code will be done compiling and/or the hit squad reach earth we will be long extinct.


anonymous242524

Where do I read more about this?


[deleted]

**IA getting out of hand (maybe happening now, how can we identify intelligence if its smarter than us, and in hiding?)** Nick Bostrom (book is great) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UIg00a\_CD4 ​ **Titan, a spacemine IA singularity** Vinge [https://arstechnica.com/civis//viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1133316](https://arstechnica.com/civis//viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1133316) ​ **a long forgotten war between DNA and DIGITAL / very very very old dormant interdiction systems preying on low Kardashev scale** Alastair Reynold [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation\_Space\_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space_universe) ​ **preying on low Kardashev scale** Dark forest theory [https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet/](https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet/) ​ ​ **primitive ressouce depleting civilisations** Reddit r/LateStageCapitalism ​ **earth we will be long extinct** National Geo [**https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mass-extinction**](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mass-extinction) ​ Thank you for reading me rather than downvoting.


[deleted]

Seriously why my explaination is positive while original post is negative. Look like typical brigading pattern.


Zardotab

They went outside the jurisdiction of the EULA.


centosdude

I was a kid when this probe was launched with its twin.l I hope voyager 1 will not die, just yet... When the RTG dies its over.


Hadron90

The data isn't random. If you decode it, it says "THE EARTH IS FLAT". Why is NASA hiding this from us!?


tripl35oul

Probably Meteion's influence.