Per the article, “much of the original documentation has been lost or fragmented. Voyager paperwork from the 1970s and 1980s was largely paper, and each time the project moved offices, more of it disappeared”.
Maybe not years ago, but scanning documents with the phone in your pocket has become incredibly efficient. That combined with AI transcription and indexing for search makes such a project faster and cheaper in 2026 than at almost any other time in the past.
I scanned an entire book in 2016. It was way faster than scanning with the phone in my pocket. It’s just not ergonomic to use a general purpose device (a phone) instead of a specialized device (dedicated scanner).
Agreed. I scanned a short book with my phone, and a dedicated scanner would have been nice to have.
But with page flattening and separation and automated capture, it went much faster than I would have thought. If I were going to do a lot more, I'd want something like a scan tent [1]. It's not as ergonomic as a dedicated solution, but in 2026 a phone and some light can get you a lot of the way there, pretty fast.
I mean, they were never meant to last this long. NASA has a shoestring budget. I understand not taking the time and resources to do that when it could stop working a week later.