Engineering and Bureaucracy
Well, you can say what you want about the climate and culture at NASA that would allow totally losing documentation on how to talk to one of their own birds, but you certainly can't fault the quality of the engineering and build quality that goes into these things.
NASA has launched a LOT of stuff over the years, and has had some spectacular failures too, But other space agencies often can't seem to get a single thing to work, while discarded, lost efforts from NASA emerge from the ether, apparently not much worse for wear, calmly still doing their thing.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
