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| Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech |
NASA's decision to switch off an instrument on Voyager 1 to keep the spacecraft operating reminded me of my much less glamorous work in a past life, when I wrote telemetry software to control pumps and other equipment in sewage and water treatment plants.. But they were only down the road from Dublin in Kildare, Laois and other places throughout the country. If the remote software didn't work, or crashed, often due to frustratingly annoying transient bugs, usually a watchdog circuit kicked in to reboot the SCADA system (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition). If there was a big problem and frequent crashes or anomalies, technicians would reinstall software. Eventually, I added the facility to upload new versions of software. All this was much less sophisticated than the complex software that runs on computers nowadays. Voyager 1 is nearly a light day away meaning a radio signal takes nearly a day to reach the spacecraft. Not much hope of sending people out to do an upgrade. Perhaps they can upload new code.
Edit: Yes, they can upload new "patches" and code updates. Code is restricted to around 64k. Voyager 1 has six computers, three of which are backups. The data bus is 16 to 18 bits wide and the address bus is 12 bits wide.
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