Voyager 1 continues to be alive on the market, barreling into the cosmos greater than 15 billion miles away. Nonetheless, a pc drawback has saved the mission’s loyal help workforce in Southern California from realizing way more in regards to the standing of one among NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft.
The pc glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1’s capacity to ship again telemetry information, comparable to measurements from the craft’s science devices or fundamental engineering details about how the probe was doing. In consequence, the workforce has no perception into key parameters relating to the craft’s propulsion, energy, or management techniques.
“It could be the largest miracle if we get it again. We actually have not given up,” stated Suzanne Dodd, Voyager challenge supervisor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. “There are different issues we will attempt. However that is, by far, essentially the most severe since I’ve been challenge supervisor.”
Dodd grew to become the challenge supervisor for NASA’s Voyager mission in 2010, overseeing a small cadre of engineers liable for humanity’s exploration into interstellar house. Voyager 1 is essentially the most distant spacecraft ever, rushing away from the solar at 38,000 mph (17 kilometers per second).
Voyager 2, which launched 16 days earlier than Voyager 1 in 1977, is not fairly as far-off. It took a extra leisurely route by way of the photo voltaic system, flying previous Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, whereas Voyager 1 picked up velocity throughout an encounter with Saturn to overhaul its sister spacecraft.
For the previous couple of a long time, NASA has devoted Voyager’s devices to finding out cosmic rays, the magnetic subject, and the plasma atmosphere in interstellar house. They don’t seem to be taking footage anymore. Each probes have traveled past the heliopause, the place the circulate of particles emanating from the solar runs into the interstellar medium.
There aren’t any different operational spacecraft at present exploring interstellar house. NASA’s New Horizons probe, which flew previous Pluto in 2015, is on observe to succeed in interstellar house within the 2040s.
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The newest drawback with Voyager 1 lies within the probe’s Flight Knowledge Subsystem (FDS), one among three computer systems on the spacecraft working alongside a command-and-control central pc and one other machine overseeing perspective management and pointing.
The FDS is liable for accumulating science and engineering information from the spacecraft’s community of sensors after which combining the data right into a single information bundle in binary code—a sequence of 1s and 0s. A separate part referred to as the Telemetry Modulation Unit truly sends the information bundle again to Earth by way of Voyager’s 12-foot (3.7-meter) dish antenna.
In November, the information packages transmitted by Voyager 1 manifested a repeating sample of 1s and 0s as if it had been caught, in keeping with NASA. Dodd stated engineers at JPL have spent the higher a part of three months attempting to diagnose the reason for the issue. She stated the engineering workforce is “99.9 p.c certain” the issue originated within the FDS, which seems to be having bother “body syncing” information.
Thus far, the bottom workforce believes the most certainly rationalization for the issue is a little bit of corrupted reminiscence within the FDS. Nonetheless, due to the pc hangup, engineers lack detailed information from Voyager 1 which may make them the foundation of the problem. “It is seemingly someplace within the FDS reminiscence,” Dodd stated. “A bit received flipped or corrupted. However with out the telemetry, we will not see the place that FDS reminiscence corruption is.”
