NASA pioneered a lot of what underpins modern design of critical computer systems. Voyager's systems are impressively robust. As far as I know, they can patch it by directly sending up new assembly instructions that are written into its memory, and doing a warm reboot to get it to start executing new instructions without powering down anything. They had the foresight to make their software highly editable, while also having multiple redundancy and emergency systems. Despite this, I wonder how much pressure the people writing this software feel. Even with all the simulators and months of rigorous testing, sending up something that can (in the worst case) break the probe has to be terrifying.

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tedd4u 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Watch the documentary "It's Quieter in the Twilight" to find out how the people responsible for Voyager 1 & 2 feel about it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17658964/

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aag a day ago | parent [-]

I second your recommendation. I watched it last night, and loved it. It was beautiful to see the level of competence and devotion of the tiny group running the spacecraft.

	▲	peteforde 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yep! If there was ever a solid recommendation for a movie to recommend to your dad...

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sebazzz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Even with all the simulators and months of rigorous testing, sending up something that can (in the worst case) break the probe has to be terrifying.

I would guess that even that case is partially accounted for by a watchdog that is hardwired into the system.

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sidewndr46 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

As another commenter noted, NASA did not design Voyager. They are responsible for launch and operations.