When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, each of its main computer systems had less than 70 kilobytes of memory — smaller than a typical phone photo — and that 1970s hardware is still carrying out commands from Earth nearly five decades later

When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, each of its main computer systems had less than 70 kilobytes of memory — smaller than a typical phone photo — and that 1970s hardware is still carrying out commands from Earth nearly five decades later

The most distant object humans have ever built runs on computers with less memory than a typical phone photograph. According to IEEE Spectrum, each of Voyager 1’s main computer systems has about 69.63 kilobytes of memory, roughly comparable to a small, heavily compressed thumbnail. Nearly five decades after launch, that 1970s hardware still receives and carries out commands from Earth. It is a figure that complicates the usual assumption that di…

Voyager 1 launched in 1977 with onboard computers holding less memory than a single photo on a modern phone — and that 1970s machine is still running, sending data back to Earth from interstellar space

Imagine building something today — anything, a car, a phone, a piece of software — and having someone tell you it needs to still be working perfectly in 2074. Not just switched on. Working. Communicating. Producing useful output. Fifty years from now, on the far side of half a century of technological change, still doing the thing it was originally built to do — while running on its own power, having received no physical maintenance for the enti…