The NASA Voyager team today posted a summary of the events that caused Voyager 1 to switch its transmitter from X-band to S-band more than a month ago, how they recovered the system and some info on the power supply status on the spacecraft.

Please see the rest of this thread for details 😉

https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/11/26/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-regular-operations-after-communications-pause/
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The Voyager spacecraft - takes a licking and keeps on ticking 💪

Voyager 1 seems to have made a full recovery from its recent power-surge caused illness. It is now communicating at the normal data rate of 160 bps using its X-band transmitter.

:mastodance:

https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/dsn.html
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Three weeks after Voyager 1 autonomously flipped over to using the S-band transmitter for communicating with earth because of a power overload condition, it appears that it is back to communicating using X-band.

No word from NASA, but presumably the team managed to turn off the heater that caused the power surge and re-enable the X-band transmitter.

Phew 😓

https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/dsn.html
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@elaterite @simonbp
Looks like the Voyager CCS computer had just 4k 18-bit words of plated-wire memory.

Instructions consisted of a 6 bit op code and 12 bit address. This permitted 64 instructions and 4K of direct addressing.

Average instruction cycle time was 88 us (11.4 KIPS).
13 registers incl an 18-bit accumulator, 12-bit program counter, 12-bit link register that pointed to the next address to be read, and a 4-bit condition code register.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880069935/downloads/19880069935_Optimized.pdf

Let’s take a moment to marvel at the design of the Voyager spacecraft software - written in assembly language for a custom 1970s CPU, in less than 70 KB of RAM, able to react to failures and keep comms. up.

Possibly, NASA may have to turn off one more instrument on Voyager 1. Over the 47 years since launch, Voyager instruments have gradually been shut off as power levels have declined by over 50%.

But the Voyagers continue to boldly go where no spacecraft has gone before.
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NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) 70m antenna 63 in Madrid is currently receiving the S-band signal from Voyager 1.

https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/dsn.html
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Voyager 1 sequence of events contd -

Oct 19 – Signal lost again; team suspected that Voyager fault protection system was triggered twice more and may have switched to a lower power S-band mode, not used since 1981
Oct 19 – 3 antennas at DSN Canberra in array mode detected the faint S-band signal
Oct 22 – Signal sent to validate S-band transmission
Now analyzing data to diagnose and fix the problem and return to X-band mode.

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It gets weirder and weirder.

JD will have a fun time explaining this photo of him in drag while at Yale law school. He will probably blame it on AI.

Not that there is anything wrong in dressing in drag, but it is the hypocrisy and hate-mongering from republicans like JD that needs to be laid bare for all to see.

Story at https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vances-campaign-wont-deny-thats-him-in-viral-drag-photo

@kamalaharrisforpresidentnews
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As for trump’s weird post about the crowd scene in Kamala Harris’s rally being AI-generated -

1. It follows similar posts by his acolytes, who generate CTs for a living
2. His MAGA supporters need daily doses of CTs to keep going
3. His supporters will believe anything he says, truth and evidence be damned
4. He throws in words like CHEATING and ELECTION INTERFERENCE, so he can claim cheating and election interference in court cases after he loses the election.
5. He is desperate.

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