Post #2299443
2024-04-23 06:41 UTC
The FDS needed to do quite a lot, especially during the flybys in the primary mission. So, it contains a radical novelty, never before seen in a spacecraft: CMOS memory. This newfangled CMOS stuff could go faster, and store more bits. But it's also volatile memory (which implies that Voyager has been running continuously, since first power-on after launch, for 46 years), and more susceptible to bitrot from all the spicy cosmic rays and stuff.
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@danderson@hachyderm.io 2024-04-23 06:44
So anyway, five months ago Voyager 1 seemingly went mad, and started sending back nonsense instead of its usual science data frames. After some poking and puzzling that I still don't understand, they managed to get the craft back into a state where it was able to send a core dump of the FDS memory, and from that they worked out that the CMOS memory had finally taken a bit too much punishment, and ~3% of it was damaged. Including parts of the programs that prepare engineering and science data.