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by jessriedel 850 days ago
> Nasa doesn't hava another Voyager probe in their lab floating around in zero gravity to run unit tests on before sending the SW patches, they use simulators.

JPL keeps a working duplicate of their Mars rovers on Earth and tests software updates there. So if the Voyager zero-gee environment prevents a useful duplicate, that means testing software in simulation is considered inferior to using a (massively expensive) physical duplicate like for the Mars robers.

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8749/nasa-readies-perseverance-ma...