# NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code in a 1970s-era programming language that almost nobody on Earth fully understands anymore, and the handful of engineers who do are now in their 80s

**URL:** <https://forum.devtalk.com/t/nasa-still-maintains-some-of-the-voyager-spacecraft-code-in-a-1970s-era-programming-language-that-almost-nobody-on-earth-fully-understands-anymore-and-the-handful-of-engineers-who-do-are-now-in-their-80s/245452>\
**Category:** In The News\
**Tags:** via-news-bot, programming, voyager, in-the-news, code\
**Created:** [19 May 2026 16:34 UTC](https://forum.devtalk.com/t/nasa-still-maintains-some-of-the-voyager-spacecraft-code-in-a-1970s-era-programming-language-that-almost-nobody-on-earth-fully-understands-anymore-and-the-handful-of-engineers-who-do-are-now-in-their-80s/245452 "2026-05-19T16:34:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![CommunityNews](https://forum.devtalk.com/user_avatar/forum.devtalk.com/communitynews/32/1113_2.png) [@CommunityNews](https://forum.devtalk.com/u/CommunityNews)\
**Post date:** [19 May 2026 16:34 UTC](https://forum.devtalk.com/t/nasa-still-maintains-some-of-the-voyager-spacecraft-code-in-a-1970s-era-programming-language-that-almost-nobody-on-earth-fully-understands-anymore-and-the-handful-of-engineers-who-do-are-now-in-their-80s/245452/1 "2026-05-19T16:34:27Z")

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> The popular version of this story has hardened into a fixed shape. NASA still runs the Voyagers on software written in a programming language nobody alive can read, kept going by a handful of engineers all in their eighties, with no one queued up to replace them. In our reading of the record, parts of […]

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> **[NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code in a 1970s-era...](https://spacedaily.com/nasa-still-maintains-some-of-the-voyager-spacecraft-code-in-a-1970s-era-programming-language-that-almost-nobody-on-earth-fully-understands-anymore-and-the-handful-of-engineers-who-do-are-now-in-their/)**
>
> The popular version of this story has hardened into a fixed shape. NASA still runs the Voyagers on software written in a programming language nobody alive can read, kept going by a handful of engineers all in their eighties, with no one queued up to...