The computers on Voyager 1 and its sister probe, Voyager 2, have less than 70 kilobytes of memory in total – the equivalent of a low-resolution computer image. They use old-fashioned digital tape to record data.
The fix was transmitted from Earth on 18 April but it took two days to assess if it had been successful as a radio signal takes about 22 and a half hours to reach Voyager 1 and another 22 and a half hours for a response to come back to Earth. “When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on 20 April, they saw that the modification worked,” JPL said.
Troubleshooting 70kb hukommelse med en 45 timers responstid. Jeg håber de har haft et lignende kit lokalt, så de kunne se om det virkede inden de sendte det op, og uden at bruge godt 2 dage på at tjekke deres tidligere “hotfixes”.
Det viser sig, at de ikke har simulatorer på jorden pga Voyagers alder:
Newer NASA missions have hardware and software simulators on the ground, where engineers can test new procedures to make sure they do no harm when they uplink commands to the real spacecraft. Due to its age, Voyager doesn’t have any ground simulators, and much of the mission’s original design documentation remains in paper form and hasn’t been digitized.
Det er så imponerende synes jeg.
Troubleshooting 70kb hukommelse med en 45 timers responstid. Jeg håber de har haft et lignende kit lokalt, så de kunne se om det virkede inden de sendte det op, og uden at bruge godt 2 dage på at tjekke deres tidligere “hotfixes”.
Uden at vide det kan jeg ikke forestille mig, at de ikke tester det på lignende hardware inden patchen sendes afsted.
Det viser sig, at de ikke har simulatorer på jorden pga Voyagers alder:
Fra denne fascinerende artikel i Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-repair-voyager-1-spacecraft-data/