Hacker Timesnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

>The last time Voyager 1 experienced a similar, but not identical, issue with the flight data system was in 1981

I would love to read about specifically what went wrong in 1981.

The closest I could find was this old article from 1981: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/28/us/swivel-on-voyager-stil...

But there isn't nearly enough detail in it. Is there an analysis anywhere online of that event?



I don't know if the 1981 issue is covered, but you can read some very fun examples of bugfixing and OTA updates on the Voyager spacecraft in this article:

https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/VIMChallenges.pdf

Including a 20 year wait for a pro-active fix to pay off in prod!

"A CCS FSW patch was developed and implemented in 1995, and linked on the spacecraft in 2006 for V1 and 2005 for V2 to automatically restart some of the critical functions in the event of an Error entry. This patch was exercised in flight in 2014, nearly 20 years after it was installed, when one of the CCS processors went into an error entry on V1; the patch worked as designed."




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: