[dkn]

It's a lot easier when it's literally impossible to change the functionality.

[Someone]

The voyagers can be upgraded remotely. It had too, as it doesn’t have enough memory to store a program for its full mission.

AFAIK, the last update was in April 2010, “to delay turning off the AP Branch 2 backup heater for one year.“ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2#Interstellar_mission)

[taneq]

> It had too, as it doesn’t have enough memory to store a program for its full mission.

Don't you just hate it when they make devices rely on cloud services... :P

[WD-42]

Not true, the voyagers can be in-flight reprogrammed: https://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch6-2.html

[quotemstr]

They can not only be remotely upgraded, but remotely reprogrammed to avoid bad bits. 1970s computers were primitive by our standards, but not that primitive.