When to send a new command

In 2023, Voyager 1 fell silent.

The JPL team found a corrupt memory region where bit 5 was stuck "on" in some code.

With no documentation or tools, they had to manually reverse engineer assembly code, relocate the damaged routines to unused memory, and patch 89 references using "hardware pokes".

After months, telemetry returned.

Each new command could make things worse.

So they checked the risk of each command. They didn't have a simulator to test with. So they made elaborate checklists to "simulate" the commands with.

When sending commands from afar, each command might break trust.

Game it out before sending!