It only really needs to be on the upper managements desk:
"The $3.57 you save on capacitors per unit will cost you $50 in lost good will."
On the other hand there is a balance between longevity through simplified maintenance and replacing aged appliances with newer and significantly more efficient models.
Sadly, there's has no system for long term reviews. In my dreams, Amazon/etc would engage customers about their durable products and ask how often you still use the product and it/when you're thinking of replacing it...
Given the economics, I wonder if best buy could pay customers $10 for a survey of their old products, knowing that it'll inspire upgrades etc.
On the other hand, it's environment isn't particularly hostile (no moisture, dust, vibration, though it gets more radiation than on Earth), and I think it doesn't have much in the way of moving parts (?)
It depends on whether they're running at a lower data rate due to the low signal power (which leads to low SNR, reducing channel capacity) or if it's just the speed of light delay.
In the former case, a relay could help quite significantly.
In the latter case, it would just add even more delay.
> [The S-band] uses a different frequency than the X-band transmitters signal is significantly fainter. The flight team was not certain the S-band could be detected at Earth due to the spacecraft’s distance, but [it turned out to work]
This is the most fascinating part to me. Isn't it well-established how sensitive a signal we can hear? Did they implement something like a new signal analysis method that enabled it?
And it says this wasn't used or even tried since the 80s anymore, I guess it grew too faint. Looking up the frequencies, X is 8–12 GHz and S is 2–4. Doesn't that mean X gets more data across at the same redundancy level? Why have this slower transmitter at all for only the first years, power conservation despite the fresh RTG?
Did they implement something like a new signal analysis method that enabled it?
Well, we do keep building bigger and bigger antennas and antenna arrays. So while Voyager can't change, we do. And we can build more and more sensitive (i.e. noise rejecting) equipment.
X is 8–12 GHz and S is 2–4
I don't know much about the Voyager design but the beam width is related to the frequency and so the S-band transmitter will have a higher beam width and thus can point less accurately that the X-band when trying to talk to Earth. Conversely, X-band is higher frequency than S-band and it's likely they would be able to use more bandwidth. So, interesting trade offs.
> Did they implement something like a new signal analysis method that enabled it?
They arrayed three antennas together.
> Doesn't that mean X gets more data across at the same redundancy level?
There's nothing special about the frequency itself. The advantage for X-band is that the antennas at both ends have more gain. 12 dB for the spacecraft and 11 dB for the ground station for a total of 23 dB.
No, they didn’t. The three antennas are in California, Spain, an Australia; they can’t all point at the same point in the sky at once, and even if two could do so, they’re not designed to work as an interferometric array.
I'm wondering also. Based on the wording here. I suspect we have more and better telescopes than we did when it launched.
> The flight team was not certain the S-band could be detected at Earth due to the spacecraft’s distance, but engineers with the Deep Space Network were able to find it.
FTA: "Voyagers 1 and 2 have been flying for more than 47 years..."
That should be written on a poster that is put on each desk of each employee of each car/washing machine/fridge/television manufacturer.
It only really needs to be on the upper managements desk:
"The $3.57 you save on capacitors per unit will cost you $50 in lost good will."
On the other hand there is a balance between longevity through simplified maintenance and replacing aged appliances with newer and significantly more efficient models.
And being $3.57 more expensive than the other guy will deny you 90% of sales on amazon or any other online marketplace.
They have the data to infer reliability rates based on things like returns, time to purchase similar item, frequency of repeat purchase, etc.
Over the volume of say Amazon, The noisiness of varied intent will normalize itself out across a sector.
They could surface this as a reliability metric on some kind of relative scale.
They could...
Sadly, there's has no system for long term reviews. In my dreams, Amazon/etc would engage customers about their durable products and ask how often you still use the product and it/when you're thinking of replacing it...
Given the economics, I wonder if best buy could pay customers $10 for a survey of their old products, knowing that it'll inspire upgrades etc.
i lost my faith in amazon. its all alibaba rebrands and mass fake reviews, plus amazon pushing their own chepo brand into every search.
its shocking how amazon went from 'me getting a package every week' to 'i go there only if i have too'
> That should be written on a poster that is put on each desk of each employee of each car/washing machine/fridge/television manufacturer.
And consumer. Very few people would use 50 year old devices even if they were/are perfectly functional.
On the other hand, it's environment isn't particularly hostile (no moisture, dust, vibration, though it gets more radiation than on Earth), and I think it doesn't have much in the way of moving parts (?)
Space is pretty hostile:
https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-hostile-is-space-2...
Nice idea, if you want to go out of business!
People don't buy quality: people buy cheap!
Can't wait for them to open source the code once it finally dies. Right now they probably can't do that because of security concerns.
So you're troubleshooting a 47 year old spacecraft that is 15 billion miles away.
The round trip time is 45 hours.
That is some kind of latency!
And “packet” loss!
Maybe Elon Musk could launch a couple of his Starlink satellites into deep space and reduce that latency.
That or apply xkcd #303: https://xkcd.com/303.
Space lasers?
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-deep-space-optical-comm-...
A cool idea. But will the additional hops reduce latency or increase it?
It depends on whether they're running at a lower data rate due to the low signal power (which leads to low SNR, reducing channel capacity) or if it's just the speed of light delay.
In the former case, a relay could help quite significantly.
In the latter case, it would just add even more delay.
You can alter throughput. You cannot alter delay. You also can only really broadcast at high power from one side.
Deep space RTT is unavoidable.
Throughput impacts delay when you send non-zero packet sizes.
how would that even work? On the whole spectrum. From the starlink satellite receiving signal to it being remotely justified in economical terms.
> [The S-band] uses a different frequency than the X-band transmitters signal is significantly fainter. The flight team was not certain the S-band could be detected at Earth due to the spacecraft’s distance, but [it turned out to work]
This is the most fascinating part to me. Isn't it well-established how sensitive a signal we can hear? Did they implement something like a new signal analysis method that enabled it?
And it says this wasn't used or even tried since the 80s anymore, I guess it grew too faint. Looking up the frequencies, X is 8–12 GHz and S is 2–4. Doesn't that mean X gets more data across at the same redundancy level? Why have this slower transmitter at all for only the first years, power conservation despite the fresh RTG?
Did they implement something like a new signal analysis method that enabled it?
Well, we do keep building bigger and bigger antennas and antenna arrays. So while Voyager can't change, we do. And we can build more and more sensitive (i.e. noise rejecting) equipment.
X is 8–12 GHz and S is 2–4
I don't know much about the Voyager design but the beam width is related to the frequency and so the S-band transmitter will have a higher beam width and thus can point less accurately that the X-band when trying to talk to Earth. Conversely, X-band is higher frequency than S-band and it's likely they would be able to use more bandwidth. So, interesting trade offs.
> Did they implement something like a new signal analysis method that enabled it?
They arrayed three antennas together.
> Doesn't that mean X gets more data across at the same redundancy level?
There's nothing special about the frequency itself. The advantage for X-band is that the antennas at both ends have more gain. 12 dB for the spacecraft and 11 dB for the ground station for a total of 23 dB.
> They arrayed three antennas together.
No, they didn’t. The three antennas are in California, Spain, an Australia; they can’t all point at the same point in the sky at once, and even if two could do so, they’re not designed to work as an interferometric array.
There's more than one antenna at each site.
https://x.com/CanberraDSN/status/1851446497453494663
https://x.com/vlex26/status/1849618522823065655
Ah, OK, thanks for the link.
I'm wondering also. Based on the wording here. I suspect we have more and better telescopes than we did when it launched.
> The flight team was not certain the S-band could be detected at Earth due to the spacecraft’s distance, but engineers with the Deep Space Network were able to find it.
It’s beyond my average brain how it’s possible at all for a machine that far away to get data to us.
I find it a fun exercise to think how little solar power we extract from the sun, due to the limited size of our planet.
Finally, a “breaks one’s silence” headline that’s not a celebrity posting something on social media.
You could say that Voyager is a celebrity. It even does cameos on sci-fi movies from time to time.
> Voyagers 1 and 2 have been flying for more than 47 years and are the only two spacecraft to operate in interstellar space.