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For the primary time in 5 months, NASA engineers have obtained decipherable information from Voyager 1 after crafting a inventive resolution to repair a communication drawback aboard humanity’s most distant spacecraft within the cosmos.
Voyager 1 is at present about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, and at 46 years previous, the probe has proven a number of quirks and indicators of growing older lately.
The most recent subject skilled by Voyager 1 first cropped up in November 2023, when the flight information system’s telemetry modulation unit started sending an indecipherable repeating pattern of code.
Voyager 1’s flight information system collects info from the spacecraft’s science devices and bundles it with engineering information that displays its present well being standing. 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 had been caught in a loop. Whereas the probe has continued to relay a gentle radio sign to its mission management workforce on Earth over the previous few months, the sign didn’t carry any usable information.
The mission workforce obtained the primary coherent information concerning the well being and standing of Voyager 1’s engineering techniques on April 20. Whereas the workforce remains to be reviewing the knowledge, every little thing they’ve seen to this point suggests Voyager 1 is wholesome and working correctly.
“Immediately was an ideal day for Voyager 1,” stated Linda Spilker, Voyager undertaking scientist at JPL, in a press release Saturday. “We’re again in communication with the spacecraft. And we look ahead to getting science information again.”
The breakthrough got here as the results of a intelligent little bit of trial and error and the unraveling of a thriller that led the workforce to a single chip.
After discovering the difficulty, the mission workforce tried sending instructions to restart the spacecraft’s laptop system and be taught extra concerning the underlying explanation for the issue.
The workforce despatched a command referred to as a “poke” to Voyager 1 on March 1 to get the flight information system to run completely different software program sequences within the hopes of discovering out what was the reason for the glitch.
On March 3, the workforce observed 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 seeing when the flight information system is functioning as anticipated, an engineer with NASA’s Deep Area Community was capable of decode it.
The Deep Area Community is a system of radio antennae on Earth that assist the company talk with the Voyager probes and different spacecraft exploring our photo voltaic system.
The decoded signal included a readout of the whole flight information system’s reminiscence.
By investigating the readout, the workforce decided the reason for the difficulty: 3% of the flight data system’s memory is corrupted. A single chip accountable for storing a part of the system’s reminiscence, together with among the laptop’s software program code, isn’t working correctly. Whereas the reason for the chip’s failure is unknown, it might be worn out or might have been hit by an brisk particle from house, the workforce stated.
The lack of the code on the chip triggered Voyager 1’s science and engineering information to be unusable.
Since there was no solution to restore the chip, the workforce opted to retailer the affected code from the chip elsewhere within the system’s reminiscence. Whereas they couldn’t pinpoint a location giant sufficient to carry the entire code, they had been capable of divide the code into sections and retailer it in numerous spots throughout the flight information system.
“To make this plan work, in addition they wanted to regulate these code sections to make sure, for instance, that all of them nonetheless perform as an entire,” based on an update from NASA. “Any references to the placement of that code in different elements of the (flight information system) reminiscence wanted to be up to date as effectively.”
After figuring out the code obligatory for packaging Voyager 1’s engineering information, engineers despatched a radio sign to the probe commanding the code to a brand new location within the system’s reminiscence on April 18.
Given Voyager 1’s immense distance from Earth, it takes a radio sign about 22.5 hours to succeed in the probe, and one other 22.5 hours for a response sign from the spacecraft to succeed in Earth.
On April 20, the workforce obtained Voyager 1’s response indicating that the intelligent code modification had labored, and so they may lastly obtain readable engineering information from the probe as soon as extra.
Inside the coming weeks, the workforce will proceed to relocate different affected elements of the system’s software program, together with these accountable for returning the precious science information Voyager 1 is gathering.
Initially designed to final 5 years, the Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, launched in 1977 and are the longest working spacecraft in historical past. Their exceptionally lengthy life spans imply that each spacecraft have offered further 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.
The probes are at present venturing by means of uncharted cosmic territory alongside the outer reaches of the photo voltaic system. Each are in interstellar house and are the one spacecraft ever to function past the heliosphere, the solar’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends effectively past the orbit of Pluto.
Voyager 2, which is working usually, has traveled greater than 12.6 billion miles (20.3 billion kilometers) from our planet.
Over time, each spacecraft have encountered unexpected issues and dropouts, together with a seven-month interval in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn’t communicate 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 path.
The workforce estimates it’s a couple of weeks away from receiving science information from Voyager 1 and appears ahead to seeing what that information accommodates.
“We by no means know for positive what’s going to occur with the Voyagers, but it surely continually amazes me after they simply hold going,” stated Voyager Challenge Supervisor Suzanne Dodd, in a press release. “We’ve had many anomalies, and they’re getting tougher. However we’ve been lucky to this point to get better from them. And the mission retains going. And youthful engineers are coming onto the Voyager workforce and contributing their information to maintain the mission going.”