Voyager 1 has resumed returning science data from two of its four instruments for the first time since a computer issue arose with the spacecraft in November
It was being built before or just shortly around the time that C was being made.
Per sources found on Hacker News:
“The spacecrafts’ original control and analysis software was written in Fortran 5 (later ported to Fortran 77). Some of the software is still in Fortran, though other pieces have now been ported to the somewhat more modern C.”
There’s good discussion about it here also that may indicate that this is the ground software and was written in Fortran V, not Fortran 5. To my mind though, C was still far too new at the time for it to be the smart choice here, and I’d assume custom assembly along the lines of what was needed for the AGC is needed here.
Imagine the xkcd meme but instead of waiting on compilation, you’re waiting for the speed of light!
¿Por qué no los dos?
Well, the tech behind the computer suggests the lack of a compiler, for one thing. I’d doubt very much that there’s even an assembler.
Wasn’t a lot of Voyager’s code written in C?
It was being built before or just shortly around the time that C was being made.
Per sources found on Hacker News:
“The spacecrafts’ original control and analysis software was written in Fortran 5 (later ported to Fortran 77). Some of the software is still in Fortran, though other pieces have now been ported to the somewhat more modern C.”
There’s good discussion about it here also that may indicate that this is the ground software and was written in Fortran V, not Fortran 5. To my mind though, C was still far too new at the time for it to be the smart choice here, and I’d assume custom assembly along the lines of what was needed for the AGC is needed here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37963826
TIL. I thought C was older than that.