After 50 years of flight, finally 1 light-day away?! The undying zombie probes, Voyager 1 and 2
An independent exercise, not a statement by the video creator or verification of every claim in the video.
How long to verify three commands at a one-day signal distance?
Assume a hypothetical one-way radio delay of 24 hours. Receiving the result of a command sent from Earth takes at least 24+24=48 hours. If each next command is sent only after receiving the previous result, 3 verification cycles take at least 48×3=144 hours, or 6 days. This excludes processing, communications-network scheduling, retries and changing distance. Distinguish independent commands that can be bundled from sequential commands that depend on earlier results when calculating a lower bound for recovery time.
Check for yourself
- Is the distance measured from Earth or from the Sun?
- Can the next command be chosen only after checking the previous result?
- How much execution, analysis and network waiting time must be added to transmission time?
Limits of application
This does not estimate Voyager’s current distance or an actual recovery duration. A light-day measures distance, and the one-day delay is a fixed assumption for this calculation. Waiting a round trip also guarantees neither repair success nor restoration of all science data.
- What to look for
- Understand how gravity-assisted routes and constraints on power, temperature and communication shape Voyager’s reach and lifetime.
- Why it matters
- Distinguishing distance from time, stages of communication recovery and definitions of the solar system’s boundary helps interpret the achievements and limits of long space missions.
Timeline
5 segmentsThe video describes relocating code around damaged memory and restoring antenna pointing, but NASA’s initial recovery announcement concerned engineering data, not simultaneous restoration of all science data. Commands involve long round-trip delays, and switching off equipment reduces both electrical demand and local heat, so power conservation alone is not enough. NASA’s instrument-shutdown report confirms an operational trade-off, while future lifetime extensions remain conditional estimates.