Sounds like it’s a recoverable error (if the scientists can’t do it the spacecraft has an automated process that’ll kick in in October.) Still, I can’t imagine what that must feel like.
Wikipedia states: “In July 2023, communication with Voyager 2 was lost when flight control pointed its antenna away from Earth, moving it by 2 degrees away from Earth. The NASA dish antenna in Canberra is being used to search for the space probe and will be used to saturate its location with commands to re-align the probe’s antenna in an attempt to re-establish the radio link. If NASA fails to contact the probe, it is expected that an automatic system on Voyager 2 will direct its dish toward Earth in October 2023.”
So essentially someone probably wanted to move it one way and it moved the other. It should automatically reposition itself in contact with NASA in 2 months. It’s amazing the foresight we had in 1977 to write in all sorts of catch-alls… In 2 months we’ll get back in contact with the probe and it will have its own place, hanging out with aliens.
Yeah all jokes aside this is a actually pretty big loss for the scientific community. Assuming it’s completely unrecoverable. We blew our chance to actually measure the conditions in interstellar space and see if it lines up with our theories, and another probe is not only not planned for the foreseeable future by any space agency, it will also take decades to get to where Voyager 2 is now.
Edit: Nevermind, see the other comment. It’s likely not permanently lost!
Next hardware reset and automatic reorientation for Voyager 2 is October 15th. Yes the device automatically resets itself about four to five times a year. Communications are expected to be reestablished then.
Wow! Wondering how the guy is being treated who sent the wrong command. I did it once at my work and people were acting really Weird. In my defense, I never really liked the job.
This. And even then there should be procedures in place to essentially make it impossible to send the wrong inputs.
It’s like when an intern accidentally drops the production database. It’s not the interns fault for sending the wrong command. It’s the managements fault for not restricting access in the first place.
This. This. I used to work on safety control systems for heavy industrial applications and it’s this. Once the system is running any changes at all went through a whole chain of people. When the change was being implemented I had my supervisor and their manager checking every line over my shoulder before we wrote it. Then test. Then lock it down with a digital signature.
It’s not at all like in college/university where you’re making changes to your code over and over. Well it is in simulations but that’s long before you deploy it. By the end everyone involved should be able to say exactly what every line of code is going to do. This isn’t an intern fucking up, the whole team did, and whomever the buck stops with at the top is responsible.
If you’re talking about Voyager, I’d assume so, but I don’t have any source to back that up. If you’re talking about my previous work, the test environment was exact enough… Cough not-even-close cough.
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https://www.npr.org/2023/08/02/1191341035/nasa-voyager-2-spacecraft-contact
Sounds like it’s a recoverable error (if the scientists can’t do it the spacecraft has an automated process that’ll kick in in October.) Still, I can’t imagine what that must feel like.
I imagine they feel bad. Not really bad, like a loved one died, but pretty bad, like a passion they worked really hard for just fizzled out.
https://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/04noaanreport/
Probably a lot like the person responsible for dropping the NOAA-19 satellite.
Wikipedia states: “In July 2023, communication with Voyager 2 was lost when flight control pointed its antenna away from Earth, moving it by 2 degrees away from Earth. The NASA dish antenna in Canberra is being used to search for the space probe and will be used to saturate its location with commands to re-align the probe’s antenna in an attempt to re-establish the radio link. If NASA fails to contact the probe, it is expected that an automatic system on Voyager 2 will direct its dish toward Earth in October 2023.”
So essentially someone probably wanted to move it one way and it moved the other. It should automatically reposition itself in contact with NASA in 2 months. It’s amazing the foresight we had in 1977 to write in all sorts of catch-alls… In 2 months we’ll get back in contact with the probe and it will have its own place, hanging out with aliens.
Great that they included these automatic hardware resets. Way to go if your computer will never see a human or human-made thing ever again
There’s no going into the office to fix this one…
https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-loses-contact-voyager-2-sent-wrong-command-mistake-space-2023-8
UP ARROW!!
sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /starman is not in the sudoers file.
This incident will be reported.
su -
Time
Oh no, Linus Torvalds is gonna call me again
Linus calling you to belittle your management of the sudoers file is the FOSS form of swatting lol.
sudo rm -rf /*sudo rm -rf i_want_to_delete_everything_in_this_folder /*oops…
“Hello, we are fucked up, let us explain what happened and why is this not our fault”
You just need to reboot it manually
Just press and hold the power button smh
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Awww, what a shame though. This probe was doing some really cool stuff, it’s kinda iconic in my head.
It should be ok. It’s due to self-reset its orientation on October 15, they put measures in place for if they accidentally lost contact.
I would still be besides myself if I had made that error though.
Yeah all jokes aside this is a actually pretty big loss for the scientific community. Assuming it’s completely unrecoverable. We blew our chance to actually measure the conditions in interstellar space and see if it lines up with our theories, and another probe is not only not planned for the foreseeable future by any space agency, it will also take decades to get to where Voyager 2 is now.
Edit: Nevermind, see the other comment. It’s likely not permanently lost!
Also haven’t we been gathering interstellar readings for a while now?
Next hardware reset and automatic reorientation for Voyager 2 is October 15th. Yes the device automatically resets itself about four to five times a year. Communications are expected to be reestablished then.
That’s great to know. This post made me weirdly depressed and was a bad way to start the morning lol.
In the meantime, they’re going to shout at it.
That’s good news! I was about to ask whether they have some absolute software recovery procedure and glad they do!
Almost like real engineers planned for such an event!
Wow! Wondering how the guy is being treated who sent the wrong command. I did it once at my work and people were acting really Weird. In my defense, I never really liked the job.
I bet you don’t simply send random commands to the probe. There are likely a dozen of people who need to approve literally every keystroke.
🤦♂️
This. And even then there should be procedures in place to essentially make it impossible to send the wrong inputs.
It’s like when an intern accidentally drops the production database. It’s not the interns fault for sending the wrong command. It’s the managements fault for not restricting access in the first place.
This. This. I used to work on safety control systems for heavy industrial applications and it’s this. Once the system is running any changes at all went through a whole chain of people. When the change was being implemented I had my supervisor and their manager checking every line over my shoulder before we wrote it. Then test. Then lock it down with a digital signature.
It’s not at all like in college/university where you’re making changes to your code over and over. Well it is in simulations but that’s long before you deploy it. By the end everyone involved should be able to say exactly what every line of code is going to do. This isn’t an intern fucking up, the whole team did, and whomever the buck stops with at the top is responsible.
They have like a whole test environment that is an exact duplicate right?
If you’re talking about Voyager, I’d assume so, but I don’t have any source to back that up. If you’re talking about my previous work, the test environment was exact enough… Cough not-even-close cough.
“I’m gonna click approve without looking because the tons of people before / after me must have / will review it.”
… and at this moment it is no longer my problem. I have written evidence that I forwarded my command for approval.
Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?
iptables -P INPUT DROP
Patching recent ssh vulnerabilities I see