Open post LeRoc @leroc@musician.social · 35mo ago Replying to @command_tab@hachyderm.io <p>NASA just transmitted a software update 12 billion miles to Voyager 2, a feat that’s a marvel of spaceflight engineering and a testament to human achievement. It arrived with the following release notes:</p><p>“Bug fixes.”</p> @command_tab@hachyderm.io Do you have an idea how big the update was? Is it measured in kilobytes? Megabytes? I would find it interesting to know that
Open post LeRoc @leroc@musician.social · 35mo ago Replying to @command_tab@hachyderm.io @leroc@musician.social The total amount of working memory among its six computers (three types, x2 of each for redundancy) is about 70 Kilobytes, so I imagine the patch would be less than that. I’d bet that the actual diff is quite small. @command_tab@hachyderm.io Personally, that they've been able to send this ridiculously low amount of data (by today's standards) over that distance and it still works, makes the engineering feat even more amazing.
Open post LeRoc @leroc@musician.social · 35mo ago Replying to @command_tab@hachyderm.io @leroc@musician.social I think I read that it was 160 bits per second (!!) @command_tab@hachyderm.io Incredible