Voyager 1 remains to be alive on the market, barreling into the cosmos greater than 15 billion miles away. Nonetheless, a pc drawback has stored the mission’s loyal help crew in Southern California from realizing far more in regards to the standing of considered one of 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, reminiscent of measurements from the craft’s science devices or primary engineering details about how the probe was doing. Consequently, the crew has no perception into key parameters relating to the craft’s propulsion, energy, or management methods.
“It will be the largest miracle if we get it again. We actually have not given up,” mentioned Suzanne Dodd, Voyager mission 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 critical since I’ve been mission supervisor.”
Dodd turned the mission supervisor for NASA’s Voyager mission in 2010, overseeing a small cadre of engineers accountable for humanity’s exploration into interstellar area. Voyager 1 is essentially the most distant spacecraft ever, dashing 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 the photo voltaic system, flying previous Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, whereas Voyager 1 picked up pace 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 setting in interstellar area. They are not 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 the moment exploring interstellar area. NASA’s New Horizons probe, which flew previous Pluto in 2015, is on monitor to achieve interstellar area within the 2040s.
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The most recent drawback with Voyager 1 lies within the probe’s Flight Information Subsystem (FDS), considered one of three computer systems on the spacecraft working alongside a command-and-control central pc and one other gadget overseeing angle management and pointing.
The FDS is accountable 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 element known as the Telemetry Modulation Unit really sends the information bundle again to Earth by 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 have been caught, in accordance with NASA. Dodd mentioned engineers at JPL have spent the higher a part of three months making an attempt to diagnose the reason for the issue. She mentioned the engineering crew is “99.9 % certain” the issue originated within the FDS, which seems to be having hassle “body syncing” information.
To date, the bottom crew believes the more than likely clarification 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 cause them to the foundation of the problem. “It is probably someplace within the FDS reminiscence,” Dodd mentioned. “A bit acquired flipped or corrupted. However with out the telemetry, we will not see the place that FDS reminiscence corruption is.”
