At 15.9 billion miles away, humanity's farthest spacecraft is still exploring the cosmos using less memory than a blank Word document (69 KB) and an 8-track tape
Incredible that it still works at all. I don’t have any functioning electronics that have been in use constantly since 1977, and they’re not 15,900,000,000 miles away.
But also constant radiation far more intense than X-rays, temperature approaching true zero, and speeds so fast that colliding with even a speck of dust would destroy it.
Interestingly, while the temperture ist technically near Zero, there isn't a lot of ways to get rid of heat, making overheating a very real problem in space.
Yet you get radiation, sun storms, extreme cold, space debris. Devices certainly have a much easier time on earth than in space. Voyager 1 and 2 were just an amazing feat of engineering, proven multiple times when parts failed and yet it still kept going.
It's the main cause of most of the issues they've had. Radiation fucks with computers. They even resorted to using alu foil for protection, it's not really protected that well against it. What works best is too heavy to send into space.
Are you sure? I thought molecules still affected a lot and heat from stars it passes by ought to still change the temperatures a little bit, no? Feel free to correct me
There are lots of recording studio tools and devices that still work pretty well and have been in constant use . Difference is in a lot of cases that they’re built to do a job well not to a price .
I have a Hewlett Packard HP41C from 1979 or 1980 that I still use. It was (and is) so good that they used them on the Space Shuttle missions. I have an emulator on my smartphone that looks and works just like it as well.
Here is some extra context for anyone wondering how a 47-year-old probe is still surviving in interstellar space:
The 69 KB of Memory: To put that in perspective, an average smartphone photo is about 3,000 KB. Voyager’s computer has less memory than a blank Microsoft Word document. Because space is so limited, the probe has to constantly overwrite old data with new data just to keep functioning.
The 8-Track Tape: It isn't playing music. It's a Digital Tape Recorder (DTR) used to store scientific data when the spacecraft can't communicate with Earth. It records the data onto the magnetic tape, plays it back to the Deep Space Network when a connection is made, and then rewinds to record over it again.
The 1977 Fortran Code: The original software was written in Fortran 5. Just recently, NASA engineers had to troubleshoot a massive glitch where Voyager started sending back gibberish. They had to write a software patch and beam it across the solar system.
The Lag is Unreal: Because Voyager 1 is over 15.9 billion miles away, a single command sent from Earth at the speed of light takes roughly 23.9 hours to reach the spacecraft. That means NASA engineers have to wait nearly 48 hours just to find out if a single keystroke worked.
Despite operating on technology that belongs in a museum, it is currently traveling at 38,000 mph through interstellar space, sending back data about the plasma environment outside our solar system.
The Lag is Unreal: Because Voyager 1 is over 15.9 billion miles away, a single command sent from Earth at the speed of light takes roughly 23.9 hours to reach the spacecraft. That means NASA engineers have to wait nearly 48 hours just to find out if a single keystroke worked.
One of the most impressive feats of the engineers imo was when one of the onboard computers that controlled attitude/direction went faulty and the antenna pointed slightly the wrong way, possibly permanently severing the communication. Somehow they managed to get a signal to the spacecraft telling it to turn its antenna back to earth again.
It is only an 8-track tape in the sense that it has 8 tracks on the tape, but otherwise it has nothing in common with the 8-track tape everyone is familiar with.
Because he used bold text? Quite striking a random redditor can claim something to be AI generated when even scientists can't even figure it out properly. Maybe that's because it is the same fucking language? People like you are just talking out of your ass.
So not even 1 light year till now? Even with current technology it's really impossible to reach any of the nearby galaxies in human lifetime it seems. All of the closest galaxies to Milky way are thousands of light years away
With our current technology, not only is it not possible to reach other galaxies, but it is impossible to reach the nearest neighbouring solar system within our own galaxy.
Space is incredibly vast compared to our current capabilities. And if we are truly bound by the speed of light, it will remain that way forever.
I saw a documentary with the people who are on the project. A couple of the OGs are still there - this has been their entire career. They were grad students when the things launched. They work out of a non-descript strip mall in Pasadena.
This is voyager 1 and its just 1 light day away from earth, on the edge of our solar system. The universe is hundreds of billions of light years wide, possibly infinite.
This is the fastest thing we’ve ever built and after 50 years it’s still only 1 light day away. Guys we are not going to explore the galaxy any time soon lol
Haha let's see more answers to this question.
It's a chunky cartridge. Eventually smaller cassette tapes got more popular, this is pre-cd, pre mp3 download.
Cassette tech is pretty cool, uses reels of magnetic tape that you record sound on. Can wipe it and re-record to make a mixtape.
When I was collecting old music, noticed distinct eras for each media. Its like a waterfall starting with the earliest disc recordings, then vinyl records explode to a little bit of everything during the mid 1900s.
But 8 tracks were popular for niche years, installed in cars in the 70s, and technology changes quickly. So it's a lot of country music haha, just a whole physical media hyperfocued on American 1970s record labels.
Commonly installed in a vintage 1970s make-out van (google for fun pix) to provide the rockin' soundtrack for a night of beer, cheap weed, and a little action on the foam mattress in the back.
Often considered a lifestyle accoutrement for the 'swinger' crowd.
The cartridge contained a magnetized tape that was wound on a continuous loop. The audio itself was written to the tape in a total of four different passes, each one of which slightly re-aligned so the reading head inside the player would move up and down as you tracked through the tape. Sometimes, if you had a long song it would have to be interrupted until the heads shifted to read the next track.
This post brought to you by Today In Make-Out History. /s
🚗 🎵 🍌 ->👶
Wow. Never really thought of it that way but you're right. This probe has been, and will continue to go where no one has gone before. And we're still getting data back from it so thats even crazier.
Here is the original version of this image (much higher quality, less cropped, not flipped). Here is the source.
Credit CHRIS BUTLER / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Caption Voyager satellite. Illustration of a Voyager or Voyager-like astronomical satellite with the Milky Way in the background as it explores deep space. The satellite has a round communication antenna and pole-like booms which support astronomical instruments. The Voyager programme consisted of two satellites which were intended to study the outer areas of the solar system. Both satellites successfully produced detailed images of the outer planets and their moons. They also took measure- ments of the strength of the planet's magnetic fields, as well as that of the Sun. In 1997 the satellites continue to take measurements as they pass out of the solar system into deep space.
On Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2026, at 2:16:07 a.m. PST, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft will be 16.094 billion miles (25.902 billion kilometers) away from Earth — or, the distance light travels in 24 hours, known as one light-day.
So much code is dedicated to security and abstraction thanks to the modern internet and expectations of code to run on multiple types of devices. Voyager doesn’t have to worry about any of that, all its code is 100% trusted and written precisely for the hardware it runs on and can therefore be very lean. Vintage game consoles had the same advantage which is why they could run complex games that are only kilobytes in size.
Yeah, for now, it's roughly a day away. Whether one is seeing from the closest point, or seeing from the furthest point, makes not much difference in how soon one sees it. 21.25 milliseconds to be precise. Handy to know if one wants a better seat, or is just being a punt about cunctuation.
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u/93195 7h ago
Incredible that it still works at all. I don’t have any functioning electronics that have been in use constantly since 1977, and they’re not 15,900,000,000 miles away.