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Pioneer 6 -- Still Alive At 35
deglr6328 writes: "As a follow up to the /. story posted on Nov.30, NASA has successfully contacted its 35-year-old Pioneer 6 spacecraft. The probe downlink (at 16bps) was tracked by the 70 Meter Goldstone Deep Space Network dish, while transmitting with total of 8 watts RF power at distance of 83 million miles (133 million Kilometers). Amazingly cool if you ask me."
The new-era NASA doesn't have that luxury. The new plan is to make a lot of (relatively-speaking) cheap stuff and send it up with fingers crossed. Even if half of it fails, it's *still* a bargain.
--
"Hello, Pioneer? This is NASA."
"NASA? My NASA? It couldn't be my NASA because you never call."
"Listen, I--"
"Are you eating right? You're not eating right, are you? Don't make that face, young man. I can tell."
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
The article says that it got a 16bit/s downlink from the satellite, but then later it says that all the instruments are turned off. What the hell is it transmitting then? Anyone know?
"Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half-crazy, falling in love with you..."
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
I would ban all software but the most basic...
... I would demand that all design work and construction take place in house
They already do this. Have you ever seen avionics software? Much of it is written in Ada or its subsets, with intensive review and oftentimes provably-correct methodology, such as the Ada83 subset SPARK. (Note that provably-correct software is only provable to do what you tell it to do; it's not provably what you want done.)
Why does this old tech last so long
It doesn't. The Smithsonian and other museums are having a hell of a time with the Apollo spacesuits, because they're beginning to crumble away into nothingness.
Keep in mind that Pioneer is being kept cryogenically cooled at 3.2K in a hard vacuum and far away from most sources of ionizing radiation. It's not exactly hard to keep tech operating in those kinds of optimal conditions.
If I were NASA
That's why you're not NASA, and why I never, ever want to get my ass launched into orbit by a NASA-designed, NASA-constructed spacecraft. If you think NASA has all the brainpower, you're dead wrong. When it comes to avionics, the brainpower is in Boeing, Martin-Marietta, General Dynamics, Lockheed and other places in the same vein.
Who designed the SR-21 Blackbird, one of the greatest aviation feats of all time? Free hint: it wasn't the government.
Who designed the X-1, the first plane to fly faster than sound? It wasn't the government.
If you're going to construct everything in-house, you're going to need a chip fab plant to build your own computer hardware. Never mind that we've got exhaustively-tested, radiation-hardened 386SX chips... we have to throw out the 386SX, even though it's a fine, well-proven chip, simply because it was designed by Intel, not "in house".
You have to throw away the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters, even though they're masterpieces of engineering--one failure in the entire operational life of the Shuttle fleet, and Morton-Thiokol engineers warned NASA that launching in cold conditions would cause the failure. By every measurable standard, the Morton-Thiokol SRBs are fine and reliable pieces of engineering, when used within their specified tolerances (which are, BTW, pretty damn generous). Why? Because it wasn't designed or built in-house.
Outside contracting to commercial companies does not work; they just cut corners and introduce mistakes.
The SR-71 disagrees with you. As do the Shuttle's main engines. As do the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters. As do the United States' impressive array of spy satellites, the majority of which were constructed by TRW.
Are you sure you still want to assert that outside contracting results in poor engineering and shoddy workmanship?
After several decades of quiet contemplation, the 16 bit message, mysteriously enough, was 42.
Back in my day, we built probes that would last decades. Forget this disposable, one-use crap you kids go in for now. When we launched something, even if it was designed for a six month mission, we EXPECTED it to last until our grandkids were running things, so they could look up and know that we were better at building this stuff than they could ever hope to be.
And we used a slide rule for everything! That little chunk of plastic and metal you use to play games has more computing power than all of NASA had when Pioneer 6 was launched!
Brusing up on using a slide rule: www.matthewmiller.net
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
After bouncing the signal off a few moons in the outer part of our solar system, NASA scientists identified the Pioneer Spacecraft easily when they logged in - login: nasa password: Linux 0.0.1test1 Last login: Fri Oct 1 12:42:57 +0500 1997 from nasa.gov You have mail. nasa@pioneer:~$uptime 6:30pm up 12418 days, 12:41, 1 user, load average: 0.02, 0.01, 0.01