Manky Monkey Motors

No, not a barn find -Voyager 1, NASA's oldest operational probe. It's the only man made object in interstellar space, having passed Venus & Saturn & still going, further & further into the darkness.
It needs to manouvre itself from time to time, to point it's antenna at Earth so it can communicate with us. Over time, it's thrusters have worn out though, meaning each change in rotation takes longer to achieve, using up valuable energy.
So NASA went back to the original specifications, written in long defunct computer code, & found a way to use it's original launch thrusters as a back up system. They tried it -& waited the 19 hours for the signal to reach the craft & back again. Success! After lying dormant for 37 years, the thrusters fired perfectly, extending Voyager's mission by another couple of years. There are members of the deep space team who've spent their entire careers working on this one tiny machine, still talking to us from the heavens.
I love all this stuff. It fascinates me that, as a species, we're capable of achieving so much. As an individual, I have trouble getting out of bed in the mornings :)

You may not be the same species as us mate ?..and to be honest whose thrusters are working after many years ?  ::)

 :P Sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to educate you lot!

I likes learning I do ::)

I do science..............Honest. ::) ::)

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was'nt he in buck rogers?

Yeah, that's right -Buck, aahhh, ahh saviour of the Universe.

Christmas present for the girlfriend's son. No, I don't do Christmas, but he's only 15 so I'll make an exception.
Yeah, of course I tried it on.
Hope he likes lumberjack shirts :)

Girlfriend ??? You kept that quite

Louise. It's a long distance, occasional kinda thing. It's complicated :)

Thanks Andy, that was interesting. Wonder if it was still Fortran that was coded in or something a bit newer. We are talking the 80s so even though C was about they didn't change that quickly as Fortran was tried and tested.  

I love anything to with space, the last frontier. Mind you they say that but considering most of the Earth is ocean (the oceans contain 99% of Earth's living space) and most of that is unexplored, especially when you think of the depths involved so perhaps there is lots to explore without leaving our planet!

What I really enjoyed this year was the Cassini Grand Finale. Another project that went on for years. 20 in all. It went as far as Saturn and recorded a multitude of data on its way and on its arrival. It even took photos of the rings as it passed through them. It showed that the particles that make up Saturn’s rings range in size from smaller than a grain of sand to as large as mountains!

It was finally sent to land on Saturn, so it would disintegrate and not just run out of fuel and be a problem. Who remembers Skyab?

Obviously, the disintegration on September 15th 2017 was the end of Cassini but not the end of processing and learning from all the data gained from it. I watched a brilliant programme that gave you the background, spoke to people who had often been working with Cassini for many years of their lives and witnessed its graceful end. If it gets repeated or there is an update, I'll let you know.

There is a great website on Cassini:
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov (https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov)

Yes please. I'd love to see that.

I'm pretty sure you are right JJ, about it being Fortran I think things like Algol, Basic and C came a little later.

It may have even been machine code or some assembly language -
 "load c, add hf, move b" etc,
I wrote the code for an engine management system with this stuff - microchip pic 16f87, it ran the ignition and fuelling, quite well actually. I would love to get back into it but can't seem to find the time.

While you were writing the above I was looking it up and yes, Voyager runs on Assembly Language (to those of you who might not know, Assembly Language is about as low level coding as you can get), as well as higher level languages like Fortran and COBOL. Fortran I can understand as it is a scientific language but as for COBOL, I was surprised. I think of it more as a business related language because of its name (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) and the type of programs I used it for. I actually liked COBOL, it was quite disciplined if used properly.

While looking, I came across a piece that said NASA was looking for coders who could work in 60 year old languages to work on Voyager! Maybe you and I, Minimutly should apply. Can I work from home?  :D

Well Andy consider yourself educated now ? :o

I have no idea what they're talking about!