The two space probes launched by the United States in the late 1970s, Voyager-1 and Voyager-2, are true survivors. For decades, they have been racing at speeds of over 60,000 km/h towards the regions beyond the solar system. The two instruments were originally launched in 1977 to observe the outer planets of the Solar System – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Their original mission was completed in 1989, but they have been showing signs of life ever since.
Voyager-2 is the only spacecraft to fly past Neptune and Uranus, Voyager-1, 24 billion kilometers from Earth, is humanity’s most distant spacecraft. Both space probes have placed a data carrier with sounds, images and messages from Earth to share the history of our world with extraterrestrial civilizations.
They built stubborn structures at NASA, they have long since exceeded their intended operational life, but there is still a connection with them as a space exploration fossil. Of course, there are problems: the 47-year journey has already taken a toll on them, their radioisotope resources are already producing a fraction of the original amount of energy due to the half-life of plutonium-238-oxide, so many of their systems (and their backup systems) have been switched off.
From time to time, problems and communication difficulties arise, but NASA specialists are able to feel these devices from billions of kilometers away. This is what happened in the case of Voyager-1, which was revealed at the end of last year to be sending unintelligible data and strange binary code lines to Earth.
Since a command line reaches the device in 22.5 hours, a change in the coding takes about two days with a response.
Thus, the diagnostics itself is not lightning fast, even at the speed of light, but now it seems that there is a solution to the confused messages. It turned out that part of the computer’s memory had failed, a chip could have given up the fight, which accounts for three percent of the flight data computer’s (FDS) data storage. This can be removed from the system, and Voyager-1 is expected to be functional with the remainder, but the repair will take weeks, and not only because of the nearly two-day exchange of messages.
The space probe cannot just be “called up”. The connection requires the use of NASA’s largest 70-meter radio antennas, for which Voyager-1 is competing with several more important active projects. Still, they won’t let go of his hand, and if it takes a long time, he will start working again, and as long as his radioisotope thermoelectric generator lasts, they will keep him alive, for the joy of science and humanity.
Source: Ars Technika, MTI
Image(s) Credit: Getty Images
