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Engineers have despatched a “poke” to the Voyager 1 probe and obtained a doubtlessly encouraging response as they hope to repair a communication situation with the growing older spacecraft that has continued for 5 months.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are venturing by means of uncharted cosmic territory alongside the outer reaches of the photo voltaic system.
Whereas Voyager 1 has continued to relay a gradual radio sign to its mission management workforce on Earth, that sign has not carried any usable information since November, which has pointed to a difficulty with one of many spacecraft’s three onboard computer systems.
A brand new sign just lately obtained from the spacecraft means that the NASA mission workforce could also be making progress in its quest to grasp what Voyager 1 is experiencing. Voyager 1 is presently the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away.
In the meantime, Voyager 2 has traveled greater than 12.6 billion miles (20.3 billion kilometers) from our planet. Each are in interstellar area and are the one spacecraft ever to function past the heliosphere, the solar’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends properly past the orbit of Pluto.
Initially designed to final 5 years, the Voyager probes are the 2 longest-operating spacecraft in historical past. Their exceptionally lengthy life spans imply that each spacecraft have supplied extra insights about our photo voltaic system and past after attaining their preliminary targets of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune many years in the past.
However each probes have confronted challenges alongside the way in which as they age.
The mission workforce first seen the communication situation with Voyager 1 on November 14, 2023, when the flight information system’s telemetry modulation unit started sending a repeating sample of code.
Voyager 1’s flight information system collects data from the spacecraft’s science devices and bundles it with engineering information that displays the present well being standing of Voyager 1. Mission management on Earth receives that information in binary code, or a sequence of ones and zeroes.
However since November, Voyager 1’s flight information system has been caught in a loop.
The spacecraft can nonetheless obtain and perform instructions transmitted from the mission workforce, however an issue with that telecommunications unit meant no science or engineering information from Voyager 1 was transmitting to Earth.
Since discovering the difficulty, the mission workforce has tried sending instructions to restart the pc system and be taught extra concerning the underlying reason for the difficulty.
The workforce despatched a command, known as a “poke,” to Voyager 1 on March 1 to get the flight information system to run totally different software program sequences in case some kind of glitch was inflicting the difficulty.
On March 3, the workforce seen that exercise from one a part of the flight information system stood out from the remainder of the garbled information. Whereas the sign wasn’t within the format the Voyager workforce is used to when the flight information system is functioning as anticipated, an engineer with NASA’s Deep House Community was in a position to decode it.
The Deep House Community is a system of radio antennas on Earth that assist the company talk with the Voyager probes and different spacecraft exploring our photo voltaic system.
The decoded sign included a readout of the complete flight information system’s reminiscence, in response to an update NASA shared.
“The (flight information system) reminiscence consists of its code, or directions for what to do, in addition to variables, or values used within the code that may change based mostly on instructions or the spacecraft’s standing,” in response to a NASA weblog submit. “It additionally comprises science or engineering information for downlink. The workforce will examine this readout to the one which got here down earlier than the difficulty arose and search for discrepancies within the code and the variables to doubtlessly discover the supply of the continuing situation.”
Voyager 1 is so far-off that it takes 22.5 hours for instructions despatched from Earth to succeed in the spacecraft. Moreover, the workforce should wait 45 hours to obtain a response. At present, the workforce is analyzing Voyager 1’s reminiscence readout after initially starting the decoding course of on March 7 and discovering the readout three days later.
“Utilizing that data to plan a possible resolution and try to put it into motion will take time,” in response to the area company.
The final time Voyager 1 skilled an analogous, however not similar, situation with the flight information system was in 1981, and the present downside doesn’t look like related to different glitches the spacecraft has skilled in recent times.
Over time, each spacecraft have encountered sudden points and dropouts, together with a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn’t talk with Earth. In August 2023, the mission workforce used a long-shot “shout” technique to revive communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft’s antenna within the unsuitable course.
Because the growing older twin Voyager probes proceed exploring the cosmos, the workforce has slowly turned off instruments on these “senior residents” to conserve power and extend their missions, Voyager’s undertaking supervisor Suzanne Dodd beforehand instructed CNN.