Maintaining legacy hardware isn’t easy when you’re in the same office. It’s a somewhat greater challenge when you’re updating a computer that is literally on the other side of the solar system.
That was the problem facing NASA recently, as the agency was forced to issue a software patch for Voyager 1, an unmanned probe launched in 1977, just a few days after Elvis Presley died. Getting on for 50 years later, the probe is just about functional while speeding through interstellar space, a mere 24 billion kilometres away.