The ultimate in debugging

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.

Links

Voyager 1 shocks NASA by signaling with a radio last used in 1981

Random Posts

Getting started with the Hugo static site generator

  • January 20, 2018

This blog is being powered by a static content generator called Hugo and hosted on GitHub Pages. Getting Hugo up and running was relatively easy. Download the relevant version and installation was just copying it to a folder.


Read More

A quick fix for missing Gmail notifications on Android phones

  • April 30, 2020

I occasionally stop getting Gmail notifications on my Google Pixel 2XL android phone. I later find that I have a whole bunch of emails that I had missed. I am not sure what causes it however I have found a way to make it work again.


Read More

Speed up in the long term by slowing down in the short term

  • March 20, 2020

On most projects there is a tendency for someone involved to become the “expert” in one or more areas. As they become comfortable and more knowledgeable in an area they will naturally gravitate to picking up tasks related to it. The need to deliver as quickly as possible can also drive this as the person who knows most is likely to be the person who can do the work quickest.


Read More