News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by soon_to_be_sb on Saturday October 31, 2026 @11:06AM (#50316838)
May be it crossed into an area of space where physics is different.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by hyperhello on Saturday October 31, 2026 @03:15PM (#50319137)
Maybe it was waiting to go through the inter-solar customs line to get out.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by adrian_b on Saturday October 31, 2026 @04:26PM (#50319797)
A big unknown planet has crossed the path between Voyager 1 and the Earth, blocking the radio signals for 2 days !

(This is not impossible, because a planet so far away would have an extremely low angular velocity, so an occultation could take so long even for a not very big planet.)

Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by soon_to_be_sb on Sunday November 01, 2026 @02:30AM (#50323403)
If we are speculating, why be so uninteresting?
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by xeonmc on Saturday October 31, 2026 @05:52PM (#50320611)
Maybe it has gained sentience on its own and is trying to awaken other space probes.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by tobadzistsini on Saturday October 31, 2026 @11:24AM (#50317011)
"Mysteriously". The gadget is pushing fifty with vintage hardware in a hostile environment. One could say a 90 year old grandma was asleep, presumed dead, and when the paramedics showed she woke up with, "What's all the fuss?"
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by snailmailman on Saturday October 31, 2026 @01:59PM (#50318370)
At the same time, every component and line of code is known. Presumably they can simulate and test for all sorts of crazy exotic problems and error cases. It’s surprising that they’ve hit a new type of problem.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by chiengineer3 on Saturday October 31, 2026 @12:00PM (#50317362)
I hope it's not because I used chatgpt to find signals outside of the internet and it successfully connected to voyager 1 somehow lmao
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by michelb on Saturday October 31, 2026 @01:56PM (#50318347)
Could it have crashed into something? I find it incredible that that hadn’t happened yet.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by thomascountz on Saturday October 31, 2026 @03:12PM (#50319102)
On the one hand, it has crashed into a lot of somethings—like cosmic radiation and micrometeorites. On the other hand, there is a lot of space in space, and the chances of Voyager crashing into something of the same or larger scale as itself is infinitesimal.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by adrian_b on Saturday October 31, 2026 @04:28PM (#50319824)
Whatever happened, it was temporary, because radio contact was established again after a 2-day pause.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by michelb on Monday November 02, 2026 @10:52AM (#50338540)
I missed this, fantastic!
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by Shawnj2 on Saturday October 31, 2026 @05:17PM (#50320330)
If it did crash into anything probably like a grain or sand or something stupid like that.
Re:NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth by bajard on Monday November 02, 2026 @07:42AM (#50336067)
For a spacecraft launched half a century ago, it's unbelievable that it still works at all.