Yeah, it seemed a bit odd. Like I would wonder if I could xommjnicste with it. But I would also know that could jeopardize the craft and is probably illegal in some way.

It's only a natural thought for people, if you can hear it, can you talk to it. So I don't see it as a CYA as much as just cutting off questions from people that know the intricacies of that kind of radio communication

Pretty crazy to think that it's sitting like this in the open, with its old APIs all ready to be pentested. Secured by literal obscurity, introduced by a distance of a light day from the closest hacker.

I think the obscurity is more due to the fact that reaching it with sufficient signal strength requires a big, big dish with a big, big amplifier.

I'm more surprised that Russia or China haven't attempted to communicate with things like Voyager. Not necessarily to sabotage, but to find out as much as they can about it by interacting with it.

At the time? Perhaps, I don't know when the design documents* became public.

But today, Voyager 1 is a 50 year old curiosity, still of interest to cosmologists of course, but governments will be less interested in it than archeologists.

* e.g. https://voyager.gsfc.nasa.gov/Library/VOY_library.html and https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19660011758/downloads/19...

Also, the exact uplink and downlink frequencies are not published.

https://voyager.gsfc.nasa.gov/Library/DeepCommo_Chapter3--14... seems to include pretty specific up/down carrier frequencies and channels used.

I wonder why the frequency was redacted in this tweet.

https://x.com/nascom1/status/1851789221885022416

Maybe they're hiding the current Doppler shift? Or just trying to prevent noise from randos experimenting in that range?

They removed the frequencies from some of the more popular sites. That started during early stages of the Ukraine invasion.

But it's still super easy to find them.

Usually it takes a few hours until the sat ham guys find them and post spectrums.

The frequencies of most research satellites are all well known. But it takes more than 30 seconds of Googling.