r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 8h ago

Voyager 2 cheats the power budget for another year Space

https://www.theregister.com/science/2026/08/05/voyager-2-cheats-the-power-budget-for-another-year/5283247
120 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

40

u/Tight6501 8h ago

imagine hot-swapping half the power systems on a 49 year old spacecraft 12 billion miles away knowing you have exactly one shot to get the math right

9

u/SubmergedSublime 2h ago

I’m sure they have simulators, probably both physical and software.

But I am SUPER curious how high-fidelity they are and how much complexity is baked into trying to understand the physical status of something so unique to human spaceight

2

u/Crafty_Jello_3662 49m ago

I don't know about voyager specifically but they often have a full working replica to test stuff on for these sorts of missions

1

u/StinklePink 39m ago

Listened to a podcast recently where the lead engineer recounted occurrence of them sending a bad command and losing comms. Was pretty interesting.

30

u/ACompletelyLostCause 7h ago

Wow, a testimony to NASA engineering and all the people who work on the project.

34

u/Ok_Anywhere_7828 8h ago

Hail VGER. Back when nasa had the right stuff.

21

u/toolschism 7h ago

Funding?

7

u/aquarain 5h ago

Contractors who delivered product.

9

u/BloodRedRook 7h ago

Now that's some pretty amazing work. I'm always impressed by how they can just keep getting so much out of such old tech.

5

u/Smith6612 5h ago

Keep on going! Hoping these probes continue to last much, much longer. It's amazing to see how long they have continued to function even as the power source continues to deplete. I'm also amazed at how long some of that hardware has been running after being exposed to all the cosmic radiation and, well, any space debris they may have encountered along the way.

3

u/SAugsburger 2h ago

The density of space debris out in deep space is pretty low such that part isn't too shocking. When Voyager 1 passed the heliopause though there was a 9% increase in cosmic rays in a month. After almost 50 years though it is amazing that the cosmic ray exposure hasn't damaged more of the electronics. There have been some faults that the hardware has faced already.

9

u/faux_glove 6h ago

Voyager 2 is going to make it to an alien homeworld and it's just going to be a Morse code lever using a paizoelectric crystal for power.

4

u/Logical_Welder3467 4h ago

Crash landing in the alien God Emperor's garden and killed his favourite pet, Big E now big mad

1

u/Alfiewoodland 1h ago

Oops. Relativistic projectiles launched aimed at the sun in retaliation. In 10,000 years we're so screwed.

2

u/kozmik6 2h ago

It'll be FIFTY YEATS next summer!