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 ...
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
