The Ultimate in Debugging 41
Mark Rainey: Engineers are currently debugging why the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is 15 billions miles away, turned off its main radio and switched to a backup radio that hasn't been used in over forty years!
I've had some tricky debugging issues in the past, including finding compiler bugs and debugging code with no debugger that had been burnt into prom packs for terminals, however I have huge admiration for the engineers maintaining the operation of Voyager 1.
Recently they sent a command to the craft that caused it to shut off its main radio transmitter, seemingly in an effort to preserve power and protect from faults. This prompted it to switch over to the backup radio transmitter, that is lower power. Now they have regained communication they are trying to determine the cause on hardware that is nearly 50 years old. Any communication takes days. When you think you have a difficult issue to debug, spare a thought for this team.
I've had some tricky debugging issues in the past, including finding compiler bugs and debugging code with no debugger that had been burnt into prom packs for terminals, however I have huge admiration for the engineers maintaining the operation of Voyager 1.
Recently they sent a command to the craft that caused it to shut off its main radio transmitter, seemingly in an effort to preserve power and protect from faults. This prompted it to switch over to the backup radio transmitter, that is lower power. Now they have regained communication they are trying to determine the cause on hardware that is nearly 50 years old. Any communication takes days. When you think you have a difficult issue to debug, spare a thought for this team.
No different (Score:5, Funny)
I used to work with outsourcing in India in the early 2000's, I think the communication with Voyager is probably faster.
Re: (Score:2)
I just had an issue with Veeam support to debug a veeam powershell command that couldn't be cancelled. That took them over 30 days to get me the solution.
Re: (Score:3)
So the main transmitter was down, and it switched to the backup transmitter. That sounds like something it should do. Are they sure this is a bug and not a feature?
It wasn't expected to do that - and that's what (why that happened) they're trying to figure out; from earth.com [earth.com] (linked in the story link):
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
From the information presented so far, they don't know (or even have strong grounds to suspect) that the system power is low. The monitoring software seems to think it is low on power, but is that due to a bug in the software for adding up the various (monitored) power drains? Or due to one of the sensors monitoring the device's power use? Or due to the introduction of a new power drain which isn't monitored? (I'm thinking specifi
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect the baud rate is so slow that it takes days to send - and verify - commands. At this distance, it may be literally slower than a fast typist, and everything has to be verified before implemented or they lose the spacecraft entirely.
There's a lot more involved than just transmission time.
Re: (Score:1)
Nasa's site says otherwise for commands and engineering data which is different than science data feed, "almost two days"
https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager... [nasa.gov]
A command couldn't be any significant length of time (not big chunk of day I mean), there would be too much risk of losing part of it
Re: (Score:3)
Voyager is 23.0 light hours from the Earth. Round trip comm would be less than 2 days, by two hours. Saying "days" for communication is misleading.
Are you seriously claiming that it is more correct to say "1.92 day" than "1.92 days"?
Re: communication "days"? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No, I'm talking about implication of saying "days to communicate."
Specifically: 1.92 days.
Re: (Score:2)
Why is it so hard for you to understand that 1.92 > 1?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If someone in a business says a project will take days, they do not mean even 2 days, but 3 or more.
That's pure bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
You will make supervisors angry.
Only if they're perseverating imbeciles.
Re:communication "days"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
They don't use radio telescopes - though the machines may look like telescopes from a distance. NASA's "Deep Space Network" has 3 major site - somewhere in America, somewhere in Spain, and somewhere in Australia, at approximately 120 degre
Re: communication "days"? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
There is only a 16 hour window each day in which data can be received from Voyager. You need to wait for the window to open before sending data. You can't always get a response back in 46 hours if the windows don't align either.
You also need to wait for the transmission of the data, which only happens at 160bps.
So more than "1.92 days" to communicate
Re:Bravo (Score:4, Insightful)
Elmo and Vivek slash funding
I am expecting they will slash funding for NASA while Space-X gets some nice fat government contracts. Bookmark this post and then come back in a year and tell me I'm wrong.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
We have DeLorean's.
The first command they sent (Score:3)
No matter what, the first step to try while trying to remotely diagnose any problem is:
"Unplug the power cord, then wait for 30 seconds. Then plug it back in and let us know if you still have the problem."
Re: (Score:2)
Look on the bright side (Score:2)
The voyager tech is very cool (Score:5, Informative)
When I read about the troubleshooting of voyager last year I was really impressed. The ability to relocate critical code around failed memory just lit up my nerd brain. After almost 25 years in critical systems support, reading this gave me deep respect for the designers.
https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Relocating code around failed memory is a nice feature to have, but quite an old one. I remember back in the 90s there were Linux patches to support mapping out failed chunks of RAM, but it goes back much further than that in fact.
It can be done in software if your code can be relocated. Basically you have to either have a CPU that supports long relative jumps, very small code, or a loader that copies the code somewhere and then fixes all the jump addresses. The last one has been around since the 1960s.
You
Re: (Score:2)
True. The thing I was impressed by was the complete round trip. The ability to peek the memory to identify the failed blocks, redistribute the code into non-contiguous chunks, upload and write the new code, all through the antenna connection at such unbelievable distances.
As you said, not new. But brilliantly done.
Nothing compared to PS3 (Score:2)
Real Programmers (Score:2)
This seems an opportune time to revisit a classic: Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal [ed.ac.uk]. It even mentions Voyager so apparently Real Programmers are alive and well.
Re: (Score:2)
Voyager was originally programmed in Fortran.
Some has been replaced by transmitted code written in C.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny!!!