SPC05 - The Voyager Spacecraft - The First Intergalactic Spacecraft

In 1977, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 on a groundbreaking mission to explore the farthest parts of our solar system. These two spacecraft were packed with advanced scientific tools to study Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their fascinating moons and rings. They were powered by long-lasting radioisotope generators and aimed to uncover mysteries that had intrigued humans for centuries. These spacecraft included two rare RCA 4061 CMOS static RAM memory chips, some of the first of their kind. The RCA-CD4061A chip was a single integrated circuit containing 256 bits of memory, organized as 256 individually addressed bits. It needed eight address input lines to access its storage locations and could store 64 bytes of data. Back in 1972, RCA was leading in the development of CMOS logic and memory chips. RCA's experimental TA6335 256-bit CMOS static RAM chips were chosen for the Flight Data System (FDS) computers of Voyager 1 and 2. Before the RCA 4061, NASA's spaceflight computers u