There's an identical voyager here on earth built same as the launched one that they use for that purpose. They may also have simulations now, but doubtful hardware was capable enough when voyager 1 launched in 1977. This is three years before Tim Paterson and 86-DOS 0.10, and ten years before MS-DOS 3.31. Joe Biden was 35 and in his first term as Senator.

[–] dparticiple@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

Unfortunately this is no longer true. Matsumoto's paper, "Voyager Interstellar Mission: Challenges of Flying a Very Old Spacecraft on a Very Long Mission" notes that the full suite of system simulators were not retained beyond the prime mission due to reliability problems, loss of expertise, and a move. This makes the team's recent achievements even more impressive.

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