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.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
540 points (97.7% liked)
Programmer Humor
33105 readers
1144 users here now
Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
Rules:
- Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
- No NSFW content.
- Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
That's good news! I was about to ask whether they have some absolute software recovery procedure and glad they do!
That's great to know. This post made me weirdly depressed and was a bad way to start the morning lol.
Almost like real engineers planned for such an event!
Someone ran 'systemctl restart networking' while SSH'd into the probe.
Unrelated but I've been wondering this for years: What's your avatar from and why do so many people across the web have that exact same one?
No idea, I found it somewhere a decade ago and have been using it. I think I’ve only seen someone with it like one other time. 🤷🏻♂️
I remember it used to be popular in gaming groups and some music around 2008-2012 and a lot of variations of the same gas mask character were made
load more comments
(1 replies)
sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
starman is not in the sudoers file.
This incident will be reported.
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
sudo rm -rf i_want_to_delete_everything_in_this_folder /*
oops...
load more comments
(1 replies)
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
V2 be like: "WHAT did you say about my mother? F... you, Earth man."
Mission control: "Dude you don't have a mother it was a typo. Dude. Talk to me."
seen
Mission control: "Dude."
seen
Mission control: "C'mon man."
This message could not be sent. V2 may have blocked your number
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
You just need to reboot it manually
Just press and hold the power button smh
That's why your color your production windows red.
When you ufw enable but forgot to whitelist port 22
Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?
Probably played with the firewall settings and accidentally disabled port 22... It sucked when I did that
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
"I'm gonna click approve without looking because the tons of people before / after me must have / will review it."
I’m gonna click approve without looking
… and at this moment it is no longer my problem. I have written evidence that I forwarded my command for approval.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Looks like someone removed the ssh keys
There's no going into the office to fix this one...
Patching recent ssh vulnerabilities I see
Tfw you conf t and shut a management port down on accident and don't have a backup console connection
UP ARROW!!
ssh root@vps
[commands]
sudo shutdown now
FUC-
No biggie just get someone to mount the files system and edit the ssh file 😌
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
iptables -P INPUT DROP
Must have been an intern.
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?
Wow, I just read the wiki. It has a 64 Megabyte tape storage, so after it realigns the antenna they can receive the data they've missed. Pretty state of the art for 1977. I wonder how they shielded it from radiation. The fuel source of the reactor lasts probably until 2026. After that, it'll travel as a brick, most likely long after humans rm -rf'd
view more: next ›