NASA’s Voyager Still Runs on Ancient Code Almost No Engineers Can Read

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Right now, two spacecraft are traveling beyond our solar system, launched in 1977 and still transmitting data back to Earth. But, here's the problem. The code keeping them alive was written in assembly language [music] on hardware that no longer exists and and almost nobody understands it anymore. Decades of original paperwork has been lost.

[00:00:18]Each time the project moved offices, more of it disappeared. What remains is described as an archaeology dig. The entire onboard computer runs on roughly 70 kilobytes of memory, less than a single photo on your phone. NASA compares operating it to flying an Apple II in interstellar space. A small team at JPL keeps it alive today, but finding engineers fluent in assembly code willing to work a mission with a defined end point gets harder every year.

[00:00:44]Voyager may stay in contact until 2036.

[00:00:48]After that, silence. The last mission that no one fully understands finally going dark.