Humanity’s most distant spacecraft is experiencing technical problems again and engineers are facing considerable difficulties in solving the problems. Voyager 1, what are we going to do with you?
The problem occurred with Voyager 1’s 46-year-old flight data collection system (FDS), one of three computers on board. FDS collects data from Voyager’s scientific instruments and retrieves data about the spacecraft’s status and general health. The system does not communicate properly with the telemetry modulation unit, which actually takes the data collected by the system and transmits it to Earth.
This is the latest communications problem in a series of problems experienced by the aging Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977, shortly after the twin probe Voyager 2. In May 2022, the spacecraft suddenly began sending attitude determination and control (AACS) data ) which doesn’t make sense. Suzanne Dodd, project manager for the Voyager mission, described the issue as “normal at this stage.”
It turns out the data was sent by a faulty computer on the spacecraft, so it was read as gibberish by the translator on Earth. Engineers managed to solve the problem by sending telemetry through one of the other computers on the spacecraft. In the three months between the problem appearing and its resolution, Voyager 1 had traveled 100,000,000 miles.
In December 2023, Voyager 1 returned to sending nonsensical data; the telemetry modulation unit starts emitting a binary code indicating that the system is stuck. The mission team believes that the real problem lies with the FDS, where the data actually comes from. The Voyager team tried to fix the problem by rebooting the FDS, but that failed. The nonsense still continues.
“It would be the greatest miracle if we could overcome it. We certainly haven’t given up,” Dodd told Ars Technica. “There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious problem since I became a project manager.”
Voyager 1 is 15.14 billion miles away and continuing to travel at more than 38,000 mph. It’s been two months, and the problem is still not resolved.
“We can talk to the spacecraft, and it can hear us, but it’s a slow process given the huge distance between the spacecraft and Earth,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Twitter. Each message sent to Voyager takes 22.5 hours to reach the spacecraft, and vice versa.
In any case, the Voyager mission is nearly 50 years old. They served their original purpose decades ago, so every day we get data from them is a bonus. When the two Voyager probes finally retire or are deemed no longer collecting data, they will still continue to fly towards the infinity of the stars, as adventurous a retirement project as any of us could dream of.
More: NASA finds a way to extend the 45-year Voyager 2 mission
2024-02-08 00:19:14
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