Secrets of the Voyager 1 Probe to Operate in Space with Just 68 KB of Memory

The computers guiding Voyager 1 through interstellar space process roughly 8,000 instructions per second; a modern smartphone processes more than 14 billion — yet that 1970s machine has operated for nearly half a century, farther from Earth than any spacecraft in history.

Voyager 1 is controlled by computers whose performance belongs to another technological era. A frequently repeated comparison puts their speed at about 8,000 instructions per second, against more than 14 billion for a smartphone. The contrast is directionally right but technically untidy. Voyager does not have one general-purpose processor, and its three specialised computer systems do not all run at the same rate. The 14-billion figure also cam…

Secrets of the Voyager 1 probe to operate in space with just 68 KB of memory