'The people that built the spacecraft are not alive anymore': NASA admits Voyager spacecraft code is still…
- Voyager still operates using assembly code written nearly half a century ago
- NASA maintains interstellar spacecraft with less memory than a smartphone image today
- The engineers who built Voyager are disappearing faster than the spacecraft itself
Launches in 1977, NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft continues operating with onboard computers which run assembly language written for custom General Electric processors.
Each spacecraft carries three separate computer systems, with a total memory of roughly 64 to 70 kilobytes across all three - less storage than a single small image file on a modern smartphonetoday.
NASA's Suzy Dodd has compared operating Voyager to flying an Apple II, capturing how primitive the computing resources have become by modern standards.
What the spacecraft actually runs and why the language matters
The popular shorthand often says Voyager runs on Fortran, but that description blurs two different things together.
The spacecraft's low-level flight work depends on...
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