56 votes

NASA just sent a software update to a spacecraft twelve billion miles away

Posted by asteroid
Tags: nasa, technology, software, spacecraft, voyager, updates, author.joshua hawkins, author.jacob siegal, author.joe wituschek, author.chris smith, source.bgr
https://bgr.com/science/nasa-just-sent-a-software-update-to-a-spacecraft-12-billion-miles-away/

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Authors
Joshua Hawkins, Jacob Siegal, Joe Wituschek, Chris Smith
Published
Oct 24 2023
Word count
408 words

12 comments

  1. doingmybest
    Link
    Of course this will lead the alien conquerors right to us. Seriously, though, this is mind-blowingly amazing. Moments like these make me so proud of humanity.

    Of course this will lead the alien conquerors right to us. Seriously, though, this is mind-blowingly amazing. Moments like these make me so proud of humanity.

    16 votes
  2. [6]
    chopin
    Link
    Fascinating, thanks for posting it. When I think about the Voyagers, I feel a profound sense of wonder and loneliness. Imagine being so unfathomably far away from the nearest human being and...

    Fascinating, thanks for posting it.

    When I think about the Voyagers, I feel a profound sense of wonder and loneliness. Imagine being so unfathomably far away from the nearest human being and probably any life at all. Makes my stomach drop.

    On the other hand, imagine all that's out there. Within the vast, mostly empty space they've been through, they must have seen incredible things that none of us will ever see or experience.

    I think the reason why I feel so strongly about the Voyagers is because they're essential a part of us. An extension of humankind all the way out there that we can still communicate with. Absolutely beautiful.

    16 votes
    1. [5]
      doors_cannot_stop_me
      Link Parent
      I saw this comment from a Tumblr post via TikTok (because living in the future is weird and dumb) and I can't find a link to it anywhere (because living in the future is weird and dumb) but it...

      I saw this comment from a Tumblr post via TikTok (because living in the future is weird and dumb) and I can't find a link to it anywhere (because living in the future is weird and dumb) but it made me almost cry and you reminded me of it, so here you go!

      gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars wondering "is there anybody out there" and hoping and guessing and imagining because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

      and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us- we got scared that we were going to blow each other up. we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we'd never get to meet them

      and then

      we built robots?

      and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

      and maybe in a hundred years we won't be around any more, maybe yeah the planet wil be a mess and we'll all be dead. and if other people come from the stars we wan't be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we're people, too! you're not alone any more!, maybe we'll be gone

      but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

      the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery: they called us curiosity, they called us explorer, they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

      and they told us to tell you hello.

      25 votes
      1. Lasco
        Link Parent
        Damn I felt some frisson reading that last paragraph. Such a powerful image of the human spirit.

        Damn I felt some frisson reading that last paragraph. Such a powerful image of the human spirit.

        6 votes
      2. [2]
        adorac
        Link Parent
        that's one of my favorite posts out there. the blog behind it has since been shut down, but there are still some reblogs out there archiving it. when opportunity died, they followed up with...

        that's one of my favorite posts out there. the blog behind it has since been shut down, but there are still some reblogs out there archiving it. when opportunity died, they followed up with something equally great.

        this is far and away the most popular post i ever made on tumblr. people have asked me if they could illustrate it, people have asked me if they could turn it into a novella, people just messaged me to say it made them cry. that means more to me than i can say.

        you probably heard that the mars opportunity rover died today.

        it was hard news to hear. i cried at my desk at work. it doesn’t make it easier that it was only supposed to run for 90 days at all; it doesn’t make it easier that it lived 14 years longer than it expected to. it lived a full life. it lived a very good life. it was the first set of eyes on miles and miles of mars. it was an explorer, it was tough, it was very, very brave. and none of that makes it easier, none of that makes it okay that it is not going to sing happy birthday to itself again.

        about a year ago, my childhood cat died. i loved her more than anything. i don’t live near my family any more, and i wasn’t there for it, but my parents were, and they held her while her body gave out, and they say she knew she was with them, she knew she was loved.

        i know opportunity was a computer inside a movable body, and not a person, or even an animal. still, i wish it had had people to hold it. i wish it had been with the people who cared for it. it seems very hard to me, to die so far from home.

        but i think - to the extent to which we can say computers “know” things, which i think is a great deal; i think knowing is most of what computers do; i think if they have a consciousness, knowledge must be nearly all of it-

        i think opportunity knew it was loved.

        every couple of months i dream that i’ve gone home and my cat’s there. even now, even though my grieving is over and done with, i visit her in my dreams, and i hold her, and every time, she purrs. she missed me. she’s so happy to be with me again.

        that’s a very human thing, dreaming of what we’ve loved. what we’ve lost. dreaming things that outlast death. like robots, and singing.

        5 votes
        1. doors_cannot_stop_me
          Link Parent
          Thank you for that link and the accompanying text! Using Google Lens to try and copy from a TikTok screenshot sucked, so good to know it's out there still.

          Thank you for that link and the accompanying text! Using Google Lens to try and copy from a TikTok screenshot sucked, so good to know it's out there still.

          2 votes
  3. mat
    Link
    There are days when I find deploying updates to systems that I'm in the same building as pretty stressful. Imagine what it's like pressing "update" on something you have absolutely no chance of...

    There are days when I find deploying updates to systems that I'm in the same building as pretty stressful. Imagine what it's like pressing "update" on something you have absolutely no chance of getting a remote hands service on, then having to wait 36 hours to find out if you bricked one of humanity's greatest achievements. I know they check and check and check again but even so, mistakes happen.

    12 votes
  4. [2]
    All_your_base
    Link
    How is a spacecraft going to Opt-Out of installing Adobe reader?

    How is a spacecraft going to Opt-Out of installing Adobe reader?

    13 votes
  5. [2]
    bengine
    Link
    It took 18 hours, and voyager has ~70kb of memory so roughly 1bps. With the signal getting worse the father it travels I wonder what the limit is?

    It took 18 hours, and voyager has ~70kb of memory so roughly 1bps. With the signal getting worse the father it travels I wonder what the limit is?

    5 votes
    1. thecakeisalime
      Link Parent
      The article is a little ambiguous, but I think the 18 hours is actually due to latency, rather than lack of bandwidth. The 12 billion miles separating us is equal to 17.9 light-hours, which seems...

      The article is a little ambiguous, but I think the 18 hours is actually due to latency, rather than lack of bandwidth. The 12 billion miles separating us is equal to 17.9 light-hours, which seems a little too close to 18 hours to be a coincidence.

      13 votes