Nasa’s Voyager-1 sends usable data from deep space | BBC News

The US space agency says its Voyager-1 probe is once again sending usable information back to Earth after months of spouting gibberish.
The Nasa spacecraft is humanity's most distant object, being more than 24 billion km (15 billion miles) away.
A computer fault stopped it returning readable data in November but engineers have now fixed this.
Subscribe here: bit.ly/1rbfUog
For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news
#NASA #Space #BBCNews

[@brianbks02]

Voyager 1: "I GOT ONE MORE IN ME"

[@wookie-zh7go]

"I didn't hear no bell"

[@dom4591]

I'm not leaving!

[@FighterFlash]

Ah Vygr live long and learn

[@ricyman5110]

they jailed the cameraman from fox 7 too😂😂😂. AIPACmake american Communis is real😂

[@db5094]

@@ricyman5110 tf are you talking about this is about a space probe

[@JDBD13]

To be fair to Voyager 1, I'm not even 30 yet and I barely function.

[@gustavgnoettgen]

Anymore

[@eamonahern7495]

I'm 48, so a little bit older than voyager, and some of my hardware doesn't function either. For instance, as of a little over 5 years ago, I no longer have a functional pancreas.

[@janparchanski9242]

@eamonahern7495 Why?

[@eamonahern7495]

@@janparchanski9242 because of a glitch in my immune system

[@pawsnpistons]

But you didnt cost millions and millions of dollars to be made and maintained...

[@Manskilz]

Voyager. The Nokia phone of probes.

[@sixstanger00]

Maybe that's why aliens haven't visited. They think, 'Damn if their PROBES are built like this..."

[@Defirence]

@@sixstanger00 lmao good one

[@user-qw1pz4xh2i]

You sir are the Human of Microbes 🦠

[@agagab1280]

​@@user-qw1pz4xh2ieh

[@splifsend]

45 years and it's almost 1 light day away - 65,000 years to get to Alpha at that speed

[@Participant616]

Mind boggling.

[@YellowKurt]

1000 years from now they will make a device, that will reduce that time frame to 1 second

[@rybobz]

We will likely create a new form of propulsion that allows us to catch up to voyager then we will bring it back and put it in a museum sadly none of us will see that day or it's incredibly likely we won't but I suppose never say never

[@Jean-PierreGrenier-yl3wp]

@@YellowKurt Speed of light is a constant cop on interstellar highway… Even at maximum light speed, Voyager 1 would take 4 years to reach to Proxima - our nearest neighbouring star. But I get what you mean: we may find ways to built a device that will zoom past Voyager 1 to reach destination before it.

[@user-ts6lv8qr4p]

Let's hope humans will not destroy the civilization in the next 100 years first​@@YellowKurt

[@RealUlrichLeland]

The computer on voyager 1 has about 68 kB of memory. It's amazing that NASA can still do cutting edge science with a computer that's about as powerful as a talking birthday card, even while it's on the edge of the solar system. The software engineers for the voyager program must be some of the best in the world.

[@samsmith2635]

Its like your laptop talking to a simple calculator

[@MrSimonw58]

68kb is a lot

[@RickPeake01]

Happy birthday 😂😂🎉

[@dexterrity]

​​​​@@MrSimonw58the irony of you posting your comment of about a dozen characters in length using a device with at least several GB of memory. That is, our current consumer devices might have about 6 orders of magnitude more memory than voyager. can we take a moment to appreciate a million times more memory than voyager (to play video games etc) is wild 🤯

[@Dr.Kay_R]

​@@MrSimonw58I can give a strong argument against this but don't wanna sound like a nerd. 😂 It's hard. Believe us. 😅

[@romeshbhat8362]

Billions of miles away and still sending signals And my bank's OTP has still not reached me

[@smrfk]

Is it from SBI ?

[@durgaprasad32154]

😂 good one ☺️

[@romeshbhat8362]

😂😂😂​@@smrfk

[@vincenzofranchelli2201]

the world if they got rid of OTP🌞

[@Leahd_279]

😂This one got me

[@yeahboyiiiii222]

In 2021 NASA put out a job application for someone who could program in Fortran 5. Some un named person took the job and here we are, they got a spacecraft from the 70's working again from 15 Billion miles away. Bravo un named hero.

[@Space-Audio]

Oh, I assure you that FORTRAN IV was for ground data systems, most of which were long ago "updated" to Sun/SPARC/Solaris platforms (FORTRAN 77). Onboard is purely assembly for the custom processors.

[@noobscoopsies1100]

I also read the same thing in other video but for assembly coding language.

[@yeahboyiiiii222]

@@Space-Audio So Voyerger is updated in ...... Fortran 5 ... they havent been doing system updates to java mate

[@DerBingle1]

I doubt it's written in Fortran. Probably it's BAL or direct machine language. They want every bit to count.

[@itstoasty7089]

They lying

[@envitech02]

I'm glad they built it in the 70s, otherwise programmers had to click skip ad every they need to talk to Voyager.

[@user-lv7ph7hs7l]

Interstellar spacecraft have premium subscriptions.

[@AlfaGiuliaQV]

@@user-lv7ph7hs7l But you´ll still be charged 9.99 to unlock all of the data.

[@LuKiSCraft]

@@user-lv7ph7hs7l One day baby, one day

[@littleman787]

@@user-lv7ph7hs7l Interstellar spacecraft now have Stories! Click here to learn more.

[@CheckmateSurvivor]

Ha ha ha!

[@Donjuanthesecond]

And my iPhones stops working every 4 years

[@rossicourvosi218]

That's intentional though

[@BurtonHohman]

Well if you paid 200 million dollars and made it the size of a small car I bet you could get your iPhone to last longer

[@GreenStorm01]

Radioactive batteries man

[@Gryzor88]

Planned obsolescence.

[@wildandbarefoot]

If it was made by apple it would have received a terminal update years ago.

[@mosshark]

Incredible. This now interstellar spacecraft was built in the bloody 1970's!

[@rustshoo5068]

Like the music back then, the chirps are coming back, melodiously, crystal clear.

[@Chromastellia]

@ForbiddenPlanetB That is just so cool.

[@CountScarlioni]

@@rustshoo5068 It's really not what could _ever_ be described as crystal clear. I'd probably describe it more like a vanishing whisper in black static. The bitrate has dropped to around 0.16k/sec and the signal heard on Earth comes in at less than a trillionth of a watt in strength. At present only the largest dishes of the Deep Space Network are capable of catching the signal at all and even they frequently don't get all the data first time around due to it being broken up by the background static of the cosmos. Thankfully Voyager 1 constantly repeats its data. Voyager's transmissions also require digital processing to enhance the signal to noise ratio in order to make it useful. The technology to do that didn't even exist when Voyager was launched and its creators probably didn't expect the probe's signals to remain detectable in the 2020s.

[@mbbb9244]

@@CountScarlioniI live about 20km from one of these dishes. It sits in an empty field. There are signs on the footpaths saying “beware of snakes”. And inside there is a large screen which lists all the probes and missions they communicate with and what time of day. It even tells you what they are talking to at that very moment. Sometimes it’s the Mars Rovers and orbiters, but it could be Juno and Jupiter, or New Horizons and Pluto. 9pm tonight it will be talking to Voyager 2 - that’s 20.4 billion km away. It’s quite a bizarre feeling looking out the window at the 64m dish and knowing it’s talking to something outside our solar system…… Wish they did something about the snakes though.

[@wicken8895]

What a great time to be alive !!!

[@Machiavelli21st]

Voyager 1: sends alien signals NASA scientist: it's sending gibberish

[@artofsam]

Just imagine that’s what it actually was this whole time that would be a great premise for a movie.

[@Hobbes746]

We know it wasn’t alien signals. The signal consisted of all zeroes, i.e. no data at all.

[@artofsam]

@@Hobbes746 I see we have an expert on alien translation!

[@interstellarbeatteller9306]

I am an expert. Black holes are really cloaking devices. Aliens are just waiting for global warming to boil us off the Planet before they visit

[@geoffmower8729]

@@artofsam NANU NANU. 🖖🏻

[@JTan74]

V-ger trying to contact the creator. "So, where's it going?" "Where no one has gone before."

[@szimultan00]

Live long and prosper!😉

[@panaderofilms]

That was actually Voyager 6...which doesn't exist..

[@swaggerfm9838]

Yet lol ​@@panaderofilms

[@eastofwarden]

It's just going lol

[@Oxley016]

@@eastofwarden currently everywhere it is going, nobody else has gone before....

[@lord_scrubington]

"what on earth is it sending back" nothing from earth I should imagine

[@NightElveee]

Your moms shock waves data everytime she gets out of bed.

[@fargoth391]

@@NightElveee HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA THATS A REAL KNEE SLAPPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM DYING OF LAUGHTER YOU'RE SO FUNNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[@Dr_Doctor_Lee]

@@fargoth391 best commend i have seen

[@5655nasir]

@@fargoth391never use these emojis again

[@fanatamon]

@@5655nasirever

[@MS-lk4xc]

This is humanity's most distant object

[@jussikankinen9409]

There is image going in space about jesus hanged on cross

[@AmiiboDoctor]

Yes, but God gets credit for that one ​@@jussikankinen9409

[@NoClue-rat]

Bunch of malarke

[@StarLightFIlmProductions]

@@jussikankinen9409brah aliens will think we’re weird if they knew what humans did to gods son

[@thoughtfullyshort]

@@StarLightFIlmProductions I think they'd think we're weird from the wars about his existence alone

[@armyveteran101st]

I was 9 years old when the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched in 1977, and I remember being excited about it as a kid. I will turn 56 years old in three weeks, and it is unbelievable that the spacecraft is still going and working!

[@spacelemur7955]

Well, whippersnapper, I was in college when it launched, but also thought it was great.

[@NAVEEN-ef4zd]

It's not working.. but the signal it have send years back have travelled all this year and reached now that's it...

[@peamutbubber]

Happy birthday when it arrives!

[@shmookins]

From Nasa's website: "It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly about 30,000 years to fly beyond it. Voyager 2 is heading away from the Sun about 36 degrees out of the ecliptic plane (plane of the planets) to the south, toward the constellations of Sagittarius and Pavo. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will be closer to another star than our own Sun, coming within about 1.7 light years of a star called Ross 248, a small star in the constellation of Andromeda."

[@bwhog]

Which means that it technically isn't in interstellar space yet and won't be until it reaches the outer edge of the Oort cloud, which will happen in approximately a great many thousands of years after we'll all be dead.

[@zikkicharade]

How a star from another galaxy is only 1 ly away😂

[@db5094]

@@zikkicharade You don't have good reading skills.... Read it again.

[@mistertagnan]

@@bwhog it’s in the interstellar medium AFAIK, which counts as “interstellar space” as it is different from the interplanetary medium. But like you said, it hasn’t really left the solar system per-se

[@bwhog]

@@mistertagnanHopefully we won't have to wait that long and, within 100 years, we'll simply be able to simply fly out and go get it and stick it in a museum. 😜

[@joji_okami]

Your car's key fob has more memory than the computer on voyager 1. Imagine that. *edit: i learned that from the Astrum YT channel. shout-out!

[@willieboy8798]

waste of key fob or memory?????

[@thesjkexperience]

Apollo computers were silly small too. Those guys were truly amazing! 🎉🎉. Doing so much with so little.

[@adorp]

Well yes, but Voyager's memory has to withstand cosmic rays.

[@espressomatic]

Pretty sure a keyfob has no RAM. What it has is ROM. And a very small amount, smaller than 68kB. More like 4kB.

[@joji_okami]

@@espressomatici read that they range from 4kb to 100kb and some even have a few mbs

[@ivanlawrence2]

I love that the Dr's background has the new space telescope, dinosaurs, something about OCD, yoga skeleton, and a moose. Also, fixing a computer that has outlived it's creators and is also billions of miles a way is also cool.

[@stuartslyper1479]

Dr Jen Millard is great! You can hear more of her on the Awesome Astronomy podcast

[@JaSon-wc4pn]

The plastic dino is made from Real Dino matter.

[@FlitwickGE]

Even Harry Potter books are there

[@ColinRichardson]

@@JaSon-wc4pn plastic is made from trees and other vegetation that was not broken down by bacteria. I believe most oil predates dinosaurs by a few hundred million years. And remember, The T-Rex was closer in time to us humans now, than they were to the Stegosaurus. So we are talking MASSIVE timeframes..

[@persianpride1989]

Better than having a dildo!!!!

[@Jussle364]

Voyager 1: Golden record San-Ti: "Do Not Answer"

[@starmaster191]

I just finished episode 5 tonight.

[@bokami3445]

For those who are interested, there is a documentary called "It's quieter in the Twilight" in which you get to meet some of the scientists and engineer's who are still working on the project and the decisions they have to make in order for Voyager 1 to continue on it's epic voyage to the stars. Highly recommended!

[@seventeeen29]

These guys took we'll fix it in prod to the next level

[@djangbahevans1]

😂

[@bakdiabderrahmane8009]

the ultimate debugging in production engineering.

[@Karuska22ps]

Software engineering is not impressive

[@captainbuggernut9565]

Grandad knew some stuff, eh kids.

[@Dr.Kay_R]

We know more than them now. But yeah. Still cutting edge 😅

[@wicken8895]

Yeah, and then forgot where he put it. 😂

[@apple54345]

tell me you're projecting your personal frustrations without telling me you're projecting your personal frustrations.

[@YellowKurt]

There's nothing extraordinary about it. Just a compressor converting uranium decay and using a stupid dish to beam numbers to earth

[@NoClue-rat]

Legend has it grandad landed in a tincan on the moon

[@davemanone3661]

This is the kind of thing that makes me angry with people that attack NASA and say it is a waste of money. "They do so many wonderful things, but sometime things don't go according to plan. Our space program is the best there is and worth every penny. Even when things go wrong there is a lot to learn!

[@Jean-PierreGrenier-yl3wp]

Yes, there is “waste” of money because not every scientific research leads to practical applications. BUT if you would STOP all scientific researches because statistically most of them do not bring improvements in our lives, then there would NEVER be any future improvement…. You can’t tell in advance which research will bring practical results. This is the part that these people complaining about “waste of money” do not understand. (And the fact that knowing more about our surroundings tell us more about ourselves too.)

[@davemanone3661]

@@Jean-PierreGrenier-yl3wp Well said!

[@kenmoraes6843]

NASA hides alot of information too. They know about UFO's and everytime it comes on camera they cut the feed "due to technical difficulties".

[@JamesAllen-mv4bj]

we should spend that money on the military

[@davemanone3661]

@@JamesAllen-mv4bj There is plenty of money to go around. We don't need uneducated morons like t-rump telling people that science is not important

[@keithhudson6460]

NASA: We have a message from Voyager1 Voyager1: "YEAAAHHHHH BOIIII"

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

🤭🤭🤭

[@lippydalips4537]

Did you try turning it off and on again🤪😂🤣

[@killeryuan08]

To be honest, they tried it once a few years ago to solve another problem.

[@Trey4x4]

Get out 😐👉

[@pekka75]

😂👍

[@richardhart9204]

The Russians tried that with the Phobos probe, and it didn't end well for them.

[@emerbrkah]

@@Trey4x4 🤣😂

[@treelonmusk5723]

The coders who still probably write in assembly i guess are doing a good job

[@Ryan256]

Fortran 5

[@Scottyd21UK]

That's what you call a job for life at this point 😂

[@sungodportal6650]

They probably hired someone who makes SNES hacks then.

[@jimnorthland2903]

I was eighteen when Voyager-1 was launched in 1977. Now I'm sixty five.

[@crazyaces4042]

I was 16.. seems so surreal so many decades have gone by. I'm very proud of the Voyagers and glad they can at least get some contact with one of them.

[@ketanovas]

I was dead yet.

[@OfentseMwaseFilms]

Billions of miles away and still sending signals, but I can't even get my son to get me a beer from the fridge

[@yellowface6314]

Man you gotta get up and get it yourself cuz those calories ain’t gonna burn themselves lol

[@rbanerjee605]

Imagine if aliens went and fixed it for us lol

[@MrBugfunk]

happend in star trek 1

[@user-yh6by9mg6l]

Also sort of happened in Oblivion.

[@Wtfisahandle344]

Which race of aliens?

[@stevencramsie9172]

@@Wtfisahandle344 hopefully not the Borg

[@Blodhelm]

Talking about Vger.

[@DrHelloWorld30]

We need more news articles like this. Absolutely amazing.

[@playeryoshi252]

Wow! Its up and running again! Amazing work NASA!

[@alzeNL]

what a brilliant interview - decent questions and answered without interruption. others at the BBC take note, this is how you conduct a science interview.

[@davidioanhedges]

The Voyager Golden Disks have more memory capacity than Voyager ...

[@Livinghighandwise]

It's static memory. Not the same thing.

[@Ismael-tv3dx]

@@Livinghighandwisestill

[@ptonpc]

Good to hear Voyager is still alive. Kudos to the team.

[@differenceispreadin]

What a fantastic, clear, polite and friendly explanation. Great guest ✨

[@laRoz67]

Incredible. If you can, find the documentary The Farthest. A surprisingly touching film about these incredible craft. So glad they got it back online.

[@aiman9365]

Taking 22 and a half hours to send a message and the same time to receive a message from something 15 billion miles away *IS FAST.* They say it's slow, but no... that's FAST.

[@BlackFlagHeathen]

That’s probably close to the speed of light, honestly. Which would make sense for electromagnetic waves of data, which aren’t a tangible object.

[@divisiona3974]

Just unbelievable.

[@tubecated_development]

Some people think so. They are usually really knowledgeable people 😉 /s

[@MrKennyroger]

The cameraman who went with voyager 1 and has been videoing it for years should receive a nobel price definitely cous he keeps getting beautiful shots of the probe...

[@vincent21212]

that we can still ping the damn thing at all is mind blowing enough. This has been an astounding fact to me for over 20 years - Id never imagined that we'd still be able to track the thing at this point in time

[@bloqk16]

Acquaintances of mine can't seem to grasp the significance until I use this analogy: Imagine being able to see or detect a lit candle from 1K miles/1.61K km away.

[@DiRtYLaWs2007]

Carl Sagan would be proud.

[@Kadag]

And, of course, cred for the genius who put the gold platter on there, Carl Sagan!

[@OliverGrumitt]

It is a great tribute to the ingenuity of the engineers who designed Voyager that the craft is still working getting on for half a century after launch. It is certainly one of the greatest engineering achievements, ever.

[@ShihTzuNinja]

Shout out to the people who designed, built, launched, and continue to monitor this thing. Amazing feat for humanity.

[@BlackLotuses]

22.5 hours to send data 15 billion miles away is actually something out of Star Trek or Star Wars 😅

[@jessemazo4791]

i call bs do th math even at lightspeed!

[@JohnRandomness105]

In general, "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" had no sense of scale. (That's a problem with many science fiction writers.) 22.5 hours is just about right for that distance.

[@user-lv7ph7hs7l]

​@@jessemazo4791 It's exactly 22.5 light-hours away.

[@ketanovas]

@@user-lv7ph7hs7l don't bother with flerfers

[@jessemazo4791]

@@user-lv7ph7hs7l the can talk 22 light hours away but cant give an expalnation why were banned form th lunar surface! i smell bullshit and you guys are goin gback for seconds!

[@averyboringchannelmadebyar3649]

apparently we now have 0.01% more chance of finding aliens

[@nikr1d3r32]

Oh you are too generous 😂 Edit: damn autocorrect

[@roberts7961]

We already have them in the UK, Islamist's

[@stevenmoore3480]

@@roberts7961 "Islamist's" is that right, we also have a lot of native people are thick as shit, and they just as bad, I say kick you the fuck out and the UK will be golden.

[@froufou100]

What will they think of us?

[@samsmith2635]

a generous number lol

[@MultiSweeney1]

Voyager 1: "I didn't hear no bell"

[@lexruptor]

Ah, Voy. Gotta love it.

[@user-yy9hk9od9u]

Unmanned mission: Already left the solar system. Manned mission: Haven't been back to the Moon in 56 years.

[@Tuggerdrums]

Easier to replace dead computer rather than a dead person.

[@anonymes2884]

52 years (last human on the moon was during Apollo 17 in December 1972). (but yep, still not a great record)

[@-.._.-_...-_.._-..__..._.-.-.-]

After someone dies on the moon, we'll never look at it the same way again.

[@wattsmichaele]

We never sent men onto the moon

[@michelmilaneh8963]

​@@wattsmichaelestfu the adults are talking

[@fett713akamandodragon5]

Being of the same age, all I can say is, keep on chugging along there my friend!

[@huebdoo]

it was launched in 1977 ... basically a dial up modem in basic programming and its still working is amazing in itself

[@BanterMaestro2-bw9vr]

All the more amazing is that the Voyagers have survived the insane radiation environment of deep space for this long without more computer glitches knocking them offline. I stand in awe of the engineers who designed these incredibly reliable machines!

[@gavriloking5637]

If they built it today it would shut off in less than a month because you didn't renew your subscription and then in less than 10 years it would break. I mean it could be fixed but the repair price is about the cost of new model which apparently will be "better" and "last longer".

[@interstellarbeatteller9306]

It would then sell Voyagers data to the highest bidder

[@brianharoldvidal2374]

The San-Ti just made the repair works. Thanks to them...

[@syntheticsandwich190]

Imagine voyager sends back: DO NOT ANSWER!!! DO NOT ANSWER!!! DO NOT ANSWER!!!

[@causticchan4617]

@@syntheticsandwich190 yo i got chills

[@rootyroot]

@@causticchan4617 You need to watch last stand (ai short film) exactly this happens!

[@PiscatorLager]

​@@syntheticsandwich190let's hope that this isn't received by a scientist who had lost all faith in humanity

[@moonshoes11]

They fixed the bugs? ;)

[@robertpearson8546]

Radiation is not friendly to semiconductors. But the engineering is truly amazing.

[@Alexander-eu8kl]

Great interview

[@dgtheone]

Awesome!

[@petevan8942]

And they say man didn't land on the moon because we didn't have the technology...well 45 years on this old tech is still working wonders...we definitely had the tech to land on the moon.

[@aykutlondon4784]

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Just because we could launch satellites into space, doesn't mean we could land humans onto the moon. The logistics of such a task is so immense and not even comparable to launching a satellite. Yet you have just compared it.

[@abisaiamatalo2769]

they should now easily land man on the moon using modern tech and materials. Strange that no country is trying to do it.

[@geoffmower8729]

@@aykutlondon4784 Now that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard!

[@aykutlondon4784]

@@geoffmower8729 how so? I explained why i said what I said. You didn't. That's the difference. I never actually said that we didn't land humans on the moon. I said there's a massive difference between launching a satellite into deep space and launching a rocket with people and a moon lander onboard and it successfully landing. Does your small IQ brain think those two things are logistically the same thing? Who knows what you think, because you haven't bothered to explain your comment.

[@microscopic.caterpill]

Black Bolt is on the moon, I wouldn’t go back neither

[@espressomatic]

Pretty cool. Insane to think of how far away VGER has traveled. And it's still not 1 Light-Day away.

[@PtolemyJones]

So love this mission, I was a kid when it launched, along with it's sister, and always interested in news about them.

[@myblueandme]

Aliens? It's like an ant sending signals to an Elephant "look down".

[@kayskreed]

Is there a sci-fi story where Voyager-1 and 2 are discovered by aliens and sent back to us? Or one where they are the last remnant of humanity in some distant future?

[@johngwheeler]

several sci-fi stories have used the Voyager probes in their plot: one of the Star Trek movies from the 1980s comes to mind.

[@cressmanfoster]

That is the plot of the first Star Trek movie. Although the probe is called Voyager 6.

[@marcd1981]

@@cressmanfoster V-GER, I remembered that as I read your comment. That would be a pretty awesome turn of events, an advanced race finding it and upgrading it to get back here.

[@CountScarlioni]

They've popped up in several scifi stories being encountered by aliens. The first Star Trek movie being the most notable example. However aliens will never find the Voyager probes. The real fate of Voyager 1 is to end up in the Smithsonian. In the coming centuries, nuclear propulsion technologies will make their way to space, and humans will rapidly establish manned and/or robotic outposts across the solar system using ships that accelerate at a constant 1G velocity. Such ships would be so fast that they would be able to journey out to Voyager 1's location in a few weeks. Some space-archaeologists will decide to have the Voyagers, and many other ancient space relics collected, brought back and put on museum pedestals.

[@Space-Audio]

Just to rain on this parade: Both spacecraft are slowly being eroded away by high-velocity impacts with micron-sized (think smoke) dust. Our best measurements indicate about one such impact per hour which produces a tiny divot and a little plasma explosion we detect with the PWS instrument. If that rate were to persist, there wouldn't be much of anything left in several million years.

[@maxqproductions1]

Good stuff but one of your photos of the tracker equipment belongs to Ed Geiger with USLaunch Report.

[@DjAmerillion]

That is awesome that it is communicating again!

[@exploretheobvious]

“Reset button” comes to mind 😙

[@CountScarlioni]

Even in space, they sometimes have to turn things off and then back on again!

[@MorganSeveret]

V.ger is back! 😉

[@ronaldtreitner1460]

still amazing what a good mind and a slide rule can do, the way stuffs built today i doubt anyone could build another one that would last so long.

[@ateamfan42]

@0:50 As a person who is also 4-1/2 decades old, I can confirm that not all systems work quite the way they did when freshly manufactured.

[@JasonPurkiss]

Makes you wonder why apple retires there laptops after 10 years, perhaps they should employ some NASA engineers 😂

[@tubecated_development]

You really wonder? 🤑

[@nickofzo]

To make you buy new ones. Mercedes once almost went bankrupt because their cars wouldn't break down and no-one bought a new one because of that.

[@alt8791]

Because spacecraft have dead-simple, potato-quality computers and longevity is the absolute biggest concern in mission design (because you can’t fix it).

[@aerohk]

It's amazing we have people getting paid full time, running around to work on cool things without expectation of making a profit or any economic return.

[@Space-Audio]

Science return, human knowledge return, is more than economic return.

[@michaelrains64295]

Not all progress is measured in dollars.

[@LukasKlein]

During the length of this video, Voyager 1 traveled roughly 2500 miles (about 4000km).

[@rickintexas1584]

This machine is extraordinary by every measure. Kudos to the men and women who developed this machine, and are continuing to work on it still.

[@eckeck1996]

Gulp.. not sure if telling aliens where to look for us is such a great idea.

[@nuntana2]

Wouldn't make a difference. They would already know our location through the decades' worth of the radio signals we've been chucking out, and if they're clever enough to make it to Voyager 1 or 2, one more light day to earth would be a blip.

[@Space-Audio]

To be fair, the golden record was mostly for us Earthlings. If we're really really lucky, our technology will advance quickly enough to catch up with the Voyagers and return them to museums. Or, maybe, they'll be the most sought-after space salvage of all time. (I'll be passing trajectory data on to my progeny. ;-) )

[@IZn0g0uDatAll]

It will take Voyager 1 16700 years to reach Proxima the closest star from earth. And we are quite certain there are no aliens over there. So we are safe. Also, a fun fact is that scientists expect Voyager 1 to survive earth by at least a trillion years. So it might be one of the only trace of our existence for an incredibly long time.

[@microscopic.caterpill]

Right like Voyager baby you on your own. By time they come, I hope I’m light years decEASED.

[@jaker3151]

The thought of some advanced civilization picking up the Voyager and decoding our information, all the way out there, gives me goosebumps.

[@DK-gy7ll]

Let's just all hope that they're not an invading species and they figure out where it came from. Let's also hope that none of the sounds on that golden disk are considered insults in their language...

[@nuntana2]

​@@DK-gy7ll Easy to figure out since there is a star map of earth's location in there too.

[@Realndeep99]

In the grand scheme of things this object just travelled a distance let’s say 1 schoolbus from your home if we think our universe as the size of our entire galaxy so there’s very little chance of detecting life I think 🤔

[@anonymes2884]

@@DK-gy7ll We've been sending a pretty much constant "Hi, we're here !" signal out into the universe in every direction _at the speed of light_ for about a hundred years. So one golden record that's vanishingly unlikely to ever be found is the very least of our problems in that regard.

[@billsmith5109]

So after almost 47 years Voyager I is about 94% of one light-day away from Earth. So 50 years to travel one light day. Or about 77,500 years to Alpha Centauri, if instead it was heading that way.

[@NOT.MI5.MI6.]

Brian cox saying something about it before about space travel and time travel etc I j just wondering if the probe if it had atomic clock on it and one on earth would they have different times on ? eg if they checked the time on voyager now and calculated the time of the signal to travel threw space would it be different times ?

[@Hobbes746]

Yes. The difference is small (less than a second, if I remember correctly).

[@NOT.MI5.MI6.]

​@@Hobbes746 Thanks for your reply 😊

[@hans3691]

don 't forget Voyager 1 made the foto called: the pale blue dot. Earth photographed from millions of kilometers away..

[@Lords1997]

“After months of sending gibberish” Id like to believe an alien repaired Voyager for us :)

[@applepeel1662]

That's absolutely incredible

[@wheezingjuice]

Way to go Voyager team! it's an astonishing computer architecture that allows for such a repair, conceptually ahead of its time for sure. Reminds a little of the human brain where different parts can compensate for smaller localized damages in other parts. I hope we'll see Voyager's upcoming 50th anniversary still operational!

[@DjHazardous]

*Never understood why there are no plans for Voyager 3 and 4 with modern tech*

[@benjaminalston8884]

Cos it’s all a lie my man

[@inventor121]

The voyagers relied on gravity assists from the outer planets based on certain alignments. Chances for another Grand Tour using similar planetary alignments won't happen until at least 2150. And by that point tech will have advanced significantly. The only other option is to burn way more fuel than anything else before and that's just not feasible.

[@CDee-if9og]

They've chucked that out too with all the previous knowledge of the moon landings 😂 Just chucked in the bin.

[@nic.h]

@@inventor121 we have other means of accelerating craft which are feasible. Laser assisted solar sails for example as proposed for the solar gravitational lense project and breakthrough slingshot.

[@fnorgen]

@@inventor121 Also, there have been quite a few missions of similar impact to the Voyagers. The Mars rovers for example, or Osiris Rex, the asteroid booping sample return mission, or the James Webb Space Telescope. There's been no shortage of more modern Voyager equivalents.

[@wildandbarefoot]

Im very glad this has been fixed. I do think a Alien did the fix.

[@thedman7305]

cuz u a bot

[@alt8791]

Amazingly insulting to the team of extremely talented engineers who have dedicated most of their lives to keeping this spacecraft alive

[@thedman7305]

@@alt8791 well said

[@BubbleMix-96]

We need to make a new one of those Gold discs

[@CarlosFernandoCastanedaOlano]

Thank you BBC News. Greetings from Popayan, Colombia.

[@AeonMusicRecord]

u can still get connection from billion miles away but so hard to get connection from across the world

[@mbbb9244]

That’s because the data equivalent of 5,125,000,000,000,000 Voyagers is transmitted around earth EVERY DAY. Pretty reliable I’d say.

[@mistertagnan]

@@mbbb9244 it also helps that there is basically nothing in between Voyager and Earth, whereas there is an entire Earth in the way between opposite sides of the Earth

[@microscopic.caterpill]

I would agree, but then I remember how humongous the land antennas we got for those space craft are, then how they are spread in specific regions of the planet in diameter and range, and then how it’s specifically calculated to shoot a certain signal in a specific direction and frequency, then how it’s different how a GPS satellite would have to scatter amongst many devices compare to- 💥

[@Mitchell527]

Some day, we will catch it in space.

[@moonshoes11]

That is an interesting concept.

[@BloodyCrow__]

Hope its not some shitty future where the rich control everything. Some rich asshat with the golden disk on a plaque on the wall of his space yacht.

[@chicobicalho5621]

Voyager 1 is nothing short of a scientific miracle. I watched its launch as a teenager, "saw" it live on television as it left our solar system, and it still lives in my heart like a mechanical family member.

[@zenzo4815]

It's just fascinating that it still in active

[@user-wt6co4ot3i]

Wish this could make the world more peaceful with less misery

[@RedFail1-1]

How would that even make the slightest bit of sense? Data about space solving all the problems in the world?

[@CountScarlioni]

Voyager 1 already tried its best to do that. Look up "the pale blue dot."

[@connycontainer9459]

It's a nice change from the usual news. So for you and me and some other people it already did.

[@cicakaki6587]

@@RedFail1-1the way people live their lives still in 2024.. and the beliefs they have.. imagine what a groundbreaking discovery from space or news of a highly intelligent species would do. We still fight with each other right here on earth about money and about who’s cult is better

[@Blodhelm]

@@cicakaki6587 Our governments would never tell us. They profit off our disfunction.

[@quinkydinkend]

An alien pressed ctrl alt delete

[@jaylm4112]

It went quiet for a long time then it started just repeating the same code information... I'm Happy we have it back

[@alexboyes3275]

‘Be a little bit clever’ the understatement of the century.

[@MaheshWalatara]

It's also got a galactic map that pinpoints the location of the Sol System to any potential aliens which I don't think was a good idea. 😢

[@mbrackeva]

Why not? God knows we need all the help we can get...

[@nic.h]

It's a very small needle in a very large haystack. You should be much more concerned with our electromagnetic emissions if you are worried about aliens locating us, as they are multi directional and travel at significantly faster speeds and still allow the source to be located, although they do get weaker the further they travel as per the inverse square law.

[@raptorwhite6468]

Aliens have no reason to fight us, if they can travel between planetary systems, we aren't a threat and if they needed resources, they'd rather take it from a planet with no life on it

[@jeffreyadams8264]

46 years in space and dodged all thoses meteors! Stop it! Get some help!

[@ThisHandleFeatureIsStupid]

By the time Voyager 2 even launched, it was already several decades too late to stop that problem. We've been venting information into space since at least 1936.

[@echomike78]

V'Ger🛰🚀🤓

[@user-wh6yx4kr7z]

I was hoping to interview a more senior position NASA employee who took part of the launch of Voyager 1 back in the days.

[@dafalzonAUS]

Sometimes the simpler the device, the less for things to go wrong, best way to explore deep space, less complicated, more durable

[@homesteadireland7473]

We didn’t know that we had advanced chips like that all that time ago ? We just thought we had fish ands chips then lol 😂

[@wizardgherkin]

just because mass produced microcontrollers weren't (broadly) around, doesn't mean there were no electronics!

[@mtheory85]

"Failure is not an option." - NASA "Durr if rocket no go boom it success!" - SpaceX

[@mbrackeva]

Even if it does go boom SpaceX says it's a success.

[@nicholashylton6857]

​@@mbrackevaYeah. It bugs me that that philosophy is now the "in thing." It would have been excusable in the 40s & 50s, but not in the 21st century.

[@mistertagnan]

Failures of LVs during testing are extremely common and expected. Thor and Atlas failed many, many times when they were first being made, and now they’re the basis for some of the most launched LVs ever Failure with crew is not an option, failure during tests is preferable to complete success. Better to fail frequently during testing and discover problems, than to let a potentially lethal problem slip through the cracks as it awaits the day it claims its first victim

[@anonymes2884]

I'm no fan of Elon Musk as a human but SpaceX's _established_ launch vehicles have a success rate comparable to any on the planet. Sure, their _tests of prototypes_ often end in explosions. That's _why_ you test. Prototype rockets are basically _going_ to explode, the point is what you learn as a result.

[@mbrackeva]

@@anonymes2884 Do you actually have any inside numbers on this? Or do you base yourself on popular news? I'm under the impression this is a very naive statement.

[@thekrevolution]

glad they made a point to mention that the data was "usable", it would upset a lot of taxpayers if that was untrue

[@quantumradio]

Very good explanation from the Dr. Thank you.