In 2015, Popular Mechanics reported on the retirement of Larry Zottarelli, the last original Voyager engineer still working on the project. He was 80 years old. The article noted that keeping Voyager alive required knowledge of old languages and systems, including assembly language and Fortran.
mek6800d2 16 hours ago [-]
Larry Zottarelli was the last original engineer still working on Voyager and I sometimes wonder if there were other pre-launch Voyager engineers still at JPL but working on different projects in 2015. Hard to track down, I imagine.
The "assembly language and Fortran" job requirement was made up by the Popular Mechanics headline writer and widely repeated in the press and online unfortunately. In the body of the 2015 article, Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager project manager, simply says, "Although, some people can program an assembly language and understand the intricacy of the spacecraft, most younger people can't or really don't want to." (The 2026 maketecheasier article kind of, sort of clarifies this.) Ultimately, Zottarelli was replaced by Lu Yang, an existing JPL engineer who can be seen in the It's Quieter in the Twilight movie and in photos of the current Voyager team.
In 2015, Popular Mechanics reported on the retirement of Larry Zottarelli, the last original Voyager engineer still working on the project. He was 80 years old. The article noted that keeping Voyager alive required knowledge of old languages and systems, including assembly language and Fortran.
The "assembly language and Fortran" job requirement was made up by the Popular Mechanics headline writer and widely repeated in the press and online unfortunately. In the body of the 2015 article, Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager project manager, simply says, "Although, some people can program an assembly language and understand the intricacy of the spacecraft, most younger people can't or really don't want to." (The 2026 maketecheasier article kind of, sort of clarifies this.) Ultimately, Zottarelli was replaced by Lu Yang, an existing JPL engineer who can be seen in the It's Quieter in the Twilight movie and in photos of the current Voyager team.
More information can be found in Voyager and Fortran 5: Programming Voyager's Onboard Computers: http://www.geonius.com/writing/other/voyager.html#PopularMec...