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NASA dusts off FORTRAN manual, revives 20-year-old data on Ganymede
NASA scientists have made some new discoveries about Jupiter's giant moon Ganymede, thanks to a dedicated team, an elderly VAX machine and 20-year-old data from the long-defunct Galileo probe.
Fifteen years after Galileo (no, not that one) ended its days with a plunge into the atmosphere of Jupiter, NASA scientists have resurrected the 20-year-old datasets and added more detail to the puzzle of Ganymede's magnetosphere.
The new data, published in Geophysical Research Letters [DOI: 10.1002/2017GL075487] [DX], paints a picture of a stormy environment, with particles blasted off the moon's icy surface by incoming plasma raining down from Jupiter.
Ganymede is the solar system's largest and most massive satellite, but has slightly lower surface gravity than the Moon (0.146g vs 0.165g). Like many other icy objects in the solar system, Ganymede may have liquid oceans capable of supporting life. ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) will fly by Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa before eventually orbiting Ganymede. It may also include a Russian-built Ganymede lander.
Also at NASA.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Wednesday May 02 2018, @03:09PM (1 child)
Do you still use wheels? Those are oooold! :P
OF COURSE they would have analyzed the data with whatever their current supported, and well understood, software is on their current supported, and (hopefully) well understood hardware. TFA doesn't even say why the VAX machine was supposedly involved. If I recall correctly, most data recovery services read data directly from tapes in to a Linux box. There would be little or no need to involve additional hardware.
I suspect the TFA just mentioned the VAX system for the heck of it. Even if someone there had kept one running, it is best to send important tapes to a pro or you really risk damaging them.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday May 04 2018, @10:22AM
Good luck using any kind of wheel from a classic car on a new one, and complying with modern safety standards.
Even the wheel has evolved to the point that old ones are useless. You can no more stick a cartwheel directly on a Ford than you can a VAX tape on a Windows PC.