this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
393 points (98.8% liked)
Technology
59421 readers
2915 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Didn't the small amount of memory they had just completely stop working? I'd love to see or hear how they managed to reprogram this damn thing and make it work again. Amazing.
It did die- one specific chip carrying the code for packaging the data for transmittal died. They kind of described it in this article. So they are now partitioning out the memory left in other parts of the computer system and copying small portions of the packaging code into those other memory blocks so it can still be successfully run.
The fact that any electronic component on this probe still works is just freaking wild.
I'm curious as to what would make them stop working anyway. It's in space; no air, no moisture, no bugs, no dirt... Unless it hit something/something hit it, I don't understand how things would degrade in it unless it's just the expansion and contraction of things as they heat and cool from the electricity running through it. But wouldn't that take way, way longer? Is it just the components used at the time not being very good for longevity? It's not using vacuum tubes or things of that nature is it?
Cosmic rays. Wikipedia entry