Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos greater than 15 billion miles away. Nevertheless, a pc drawback has stored the mission’s loyal assist workforce in Southern California from figuring out way more concerning the standing of one in all NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft.
The pc glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1’s means to ship again telemetry information, akin to measurements from the craft’s science devices or primary engineering details about how the probe was doing. Consequently, 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 venture supervisor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. “There are different issues we are able to strive. However that is, by far, probably the most severe since I’ve been venture supervisor.”
Dodd turned the venture 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 probably 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 distant. It took a extra leisurely route via 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 many years, NASA has devoted Voyager’s devices to learning cosmic rays, the magnetic area, and the plasma setting in interstellar house. 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 are not any different operational spacecraft at present exploring interstellar house. NASA’s New Horizons probe, which flew previous Pluto in 2015, is on monitor 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 in all three computer systems on the spacecraft working alongside a command-and-control central pc and one other system overseeing angle management and pointing.
The FDS is liable for gathering science and engineering information from the spacecraft’s community of sensors after which combining the data right into a single information package deal in binary code—a sequence of 1s and 0s. A separate element referred to as the Telemetry Modulation Unit really sends the information package deal again to Earth via 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 response to 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 positive” the issue originated within the FDS, which seems to be having hassle “body syncing” information.
Up to now, the bottom workforce believes the most certainly clarification for the issue is a little bit of corrupted reminiscence within the FDS. Nevertheless, due to the pc hangup, engineers lack detailed information from Voyager 1 that may cause them to the basis of the difficulty. “It is seemingly someplace within the FDS reminiscence,” Dodd stated. “A bit bought flipped or corrupted. However with out the telemetry, we will not see the place that FDS reminiscence corruption is.”
