Humanity’s most distant spacecraft is glitching out—once more—and engineers are having fairly a tough time fixing the issue. Voyager 1, what are we going to do with you?
The difficulty is with the 46-year-old Voyager 1’s flight knowledge system (FDS), certainly one of its three onboard computer systems. The FDS collects knowledge from Voyager’s science devices and takes knowledge on the spacecraft’s standing and basic well being. The system isn’t correctly speaking with the telemetry modulation unit, which truly takes the information collected by the system and sends it to Earth.
That is simply the most recent in a spate of communications points with the growing old Voyager 1, which launched in 1977, shortly after twin spacecraft Voyager 2. In Might 2022, the probe instantly began sending nonsensical attitude articulation and control (AACS) data. Suzanne Dodd, undertaking supervisor for the Voyager missions, described the glitch as “par for the course at this stage.”
It turned out that the information was being transmitted by a defective laptop on the spacecraft, making it learn out as gibberish to Earth-based interpreters. Engineers resolved the issue by sending the telemetry by means of one of many spacecraft’s different computer systems. Within the three months between the issue arising and it being resolved, Voyager 1 traveled 100,000,000 miles.
In December 2023, Voyager 1 resumed sending gibberish; the telemetry modulation unit started emitting binary code that appeared to recommend it was caught. The mission group believes the difficulty actually lies with the FDS, the place the information is definitely coming from. The Voyager group tried to repair the issue by rebooting the FDS, however that failed. The gibberish persists.
“It might be the largest miracle if we get it again. We actually haven’t given up,” Dodd told Ars Technica. “There are different issues we are able to strive. However that is, by far, probably the most critical since I’ve been undertaking supervisor.”
Voyager 1 is 15.14 billion miles away and continues to zip alongside at simply over 38,000 mph. It’s been two months, and the difficulty stays unresolved.
“We are able to discuss to the spacecraft, and it may well hear us, but it surely’s a gradual course of given the spacecraft’s unbelievable distance from Earth,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated on Twitter. Each message despatched to Voyager takes 22.5 hours to get to the probe, and vice versa.
In any case, the Voyager missions are almost 50 years previous. They served their unique goal many years in the past, so on daily basis we get knowledge from them is a bonus. When the 2 Voyager spacecraft lastly sputter out or are given up on so far as knowledge assortment goes, they’ll nonetheless be coasting—flying—into star-spangled infinity, as intrepid a retirement undertaking as any of us may ever dream of.
Extra: NASA Power Hack Extends 45-Year Voyager 2 Mission Even Longer
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