Voyager Status, What is it? Options

[tuvas]

Anyone know the latest Voyager status? I've hear rumors, but I'm wondering if anyone has anything more concrete (I won't share the rumors, as I really don't know much about it, so...)

[mcaplinger]

Nice post, but I feel compelled to nit-pick a little, sorry.

This is a problem NASA long since solved. These days, every space probe that launches, leaves a perfect duplicate back on Earth. Remember in “The Martian”, how they had another copy of Pathfinder sitting under a tarp in a warehouse? That’s accurate. It’s been standard practice for 30 years. But back in 1977, nobody had thought of that yet.

They had all of that for Voyager, they just don't have it today, probably because the hardware died and couldn't be repaired. Missions I've worked on (MGS for example) have been severely challenged late in the mission to keep those resources going. The situation has been improving, but I wouldn't call it "solved". And it is rarely if ever a "perfect duplicate" -- on MGS our MOC ground hardware was a bare circuit board mounted to a big sheet of plywood. The spacecraft simulator is usually what's called a "flatsat" -- a collection of boards on tables or in racks, hardly a complete spacecraft.

And good luck finding any of that Pathfinder hardware even today, much less in the near future of "The Martian". All of that stuff was likely scrapped shortly after the mission ended.

[Tom Tamlyn]

What about the Pathfinder models that JPL occasionally trots out for "group portrait" photo ops to show the evolution of Mars rovers from, e.g., Pathfinder to Perseverance? Are those dummies without the electronic innards?