Legacy of Voyager
Some days ago a Seven Wonders of the IT World article was posted, where Voyager 1 was named as ‘Computer farthest from Earth’. This started an interestin browsing for me.
Looking at the Voyager FAQ reveals a lot of interesting stories. Some are:
- when the satellite reached the border of our solar system, the cameras were turned back and captured the first pictures how it looks like from outside
- the data about the earth which is contained on golden phonograph records was released as a book and on cdrom too. see Carl Sagan: Murmurs of Earth
- part of the original team was frightened about sending so much information about us on the discs out there, however we are already giving life signs with the pollution our satellites create
and the most relevant part:
There are three different computer types on the Voyager spacecraft and there are two of each kind. Total number of words among the six computers is about 32K.
Computer Command System (CCS) – 18-bit word, interrupt type processors (2) with 4096 words each of plated wire, non-volatile memory.
Flight Data System (FDS) – 16-bit word machine (2) with modular memories and 8198 words each.
Attitude and Articulation Control System (AACS) – 16-bit word machines (2) with 4096 words each.
According to my calulations, that’s a total of about 541KB, or small potatoes compared to today’s microprocessors.
(Well, I think that is only ~541 kilobits or 66 kilobytes)
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