this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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Voyager 1 loses contact with NASA, turns on retro transmitter not used since 1981 (www.livescience.com)
submitted 8 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 95 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

I'm only 41 years old.

This recievier has been working for my whole life, goes out of service 15 billion miles away, turns on a backup reciever, and is now back in contact with NASA.

.........but the ice cream machine at McDonalds is still broken.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 hours ago

Both are by design. The ice cream machine actually just got a DMCA exception so the company that makes it no longer can dictate who repairs it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 hours ago

I'm picturing the Voyager 1 terminal is an ancient computer from the 1970s hooked up to a large parabolic antenna, and everyone is afraid to upgrade it because they might mess something up. I'm sure that's not the case, but its what lives in my mind.

Since I was thinking about it I looked up some stuff: "So Voyager-1 does not β€œreally” have a computer, in the sense that it does not have an operating system or RAM or a microprocessor. It was built in the 60s before any of this was invented and used CMOS-based microcontroller chips from Texas Instruments. Overall, it has a 16-bit processor and a MASSIVE memory of 70 KILOBYTES. That is smaller memory than a thumbnail of a phone image today, but it was enough to send images through which we discovered Jupiter has rings and much more."

From: https://medium.com/towards-generative-ai/voyager-1-what-computer-system-it-has-that-is-still-running-strong-a269aaea316b

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Holy fuck is the real distance?