NASA’s iconic space probe is having trouble communicating with its home planet due to a computer glitch, forcing engineers to turn to decades-old evidence to come up with a way to fix the 46-year-old mission.
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and is now more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth. The spacecraft has been exploring the outer regions of the solar system, but was recently unable to send back any scientific or engineering data due to a problem with one of the three computers on board, NASA says. He said Tuesday.
The Spacecraft Flight Data System (FDS) collects data from Voyager’s science instruments, as well as engineering data about the health of the spacecraft. This data is combined into a single package so that it can be transmitted to Earth through one of the probe’s subsystems, the Telemetry Modulation Unit (TMU), in binary code.
However, the DSF and TMU are having trouble communicating with each other. As a result, the TMU began sending data to Mission Control in a repetitive pattern of ones and zeros, as if it were stuck. The team behind the mission believes an issue with the FDS is the source of the communication outage.
“Last weekend, the team attempted to restart FDS and return it to the state it was in before the problem began, but the spacecraft still did not return usable data,” NASA wrote in a statement.
Voyager 1 and its sister ship, Voyager 2, have been active longer than any other spacecraft in history. An impressive accomplishment, but it comes with unique challenges. In order to come up with a solution for the space probe, NASA engineers search through original documents that were written decades ago. “As a result, it takes time for the team to understand how the new command will affect spacecraft operations in order to avoid unintended consequences,” the space agency wrote.
The spacecraft is so far away that it takes 22.5 hours for commands from Earth to reach Voyager 1 and back. This means that the mission team must wait 45 hours to see if the command they sent was effective.
This isn’t the first time Voyager 1 has stopped short of logic. Last year, the space probe was launched Distorted telemetry data transmission Which does not match its actual location and direction. At the time, NASA engineers discovered that the problem was the result of a computer glitch that was corrupting the data.
Despite some minor hiccups, Voyager 1 still performs well for an older spacecraft and NASA’s longest operational mission. Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in August 2012 to study the outer solar system and explore beyond the sun’s heliosphere, and has traveled farther from Earth than any other spacecraft.
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