Is it true that Galileo used left-over parts from Voyager?
Although there were many new technologies developed for Galileo, there are numerous components that are around 20-25 years old! These parts are: the transponder (a combination of receiver and exciter), the power amplifier (a traveling wave tube), a telemetry modulation unit (generates telemetry subcarrier and converts telemetry data bits into coded symbols for transmission to earth, and a command detector unit (demodulates the command waveform from the radio receiver’s output and sends the command data bits to the on-board computer). All of these parts are left-overs or “spares” from the Voyager spacecraft project. Voyager was launched in 1977, so it uses radio technology from the early 70s. And, truth be known, the fundamental designs of the transponder and traveling wave tube amplifiers date back to the Mariner spacecraft of the early 60s to early 70s, and the telemetry modulation and command detection to the Viking spacecraft designed in the early 70s.
