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NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has skilled a pc glitch that’s inflicting a little bit of a communication breakdown between the 46-year-old probe and its mission staff on Earth.
Engineers are at the moment making an attempt to resolve the problem because the getting older spacecraft explores uncharted cosmic territory alongside the outer reaches of the photo voltaic system.
Voyager 1 is at the moment the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, whereas its twin Voyager 2 has traveled greater than 12 billion miles (20 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 effectively 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 lifespans imply that each spacecraft have offered extra insights about our photo voltaic system and past after attaining their preliminary objectives of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune many years in the past.
However their unexpectedly prolonged journeys haven’t been with out challenges.
Voyager 1 has three onboard computer systems, together with a flight information system that 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 collection of ones and zeroes.
However Voyager 1’s flight information system now seems to be caught on auto-repeat, in a state of affairs harking back to the movie “Groundhog Day.”
The mission staff first observed the problem November 14, when the flight information system’s telecommunications unit started sending again a repeating sample of ones and zeroes, prefer it was trapped in a loop.
Whereas the spacecraft can nonetheless obtain and perform instructions transmitted from the mission staff, an issue with that telecommunications unit means no science or engineering information from Voyager 1 is being returned to Earth.
The Voyager staff despatched instructions over the weekend for the spacecraft to restart the flight information system, however no usable information has come again but, in accordance with NASA.
NASA engineers are at the moment making an attempt to assemble extra details about the underlying reason for the problem earlier than figuring out the following steps to presumably appropriate it, mentioned Calla Cofield, media relations specialist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which manages the mission. The method might take weeks.
The final time Voyager 1 skilled an analogous, however not similar, concern with the flight information system was in 1981, and the present downside doesn’t seem like related to different glitches the spacecraft has skilled lately, Cofield mentioned.
As each Voyager probes expertise new trials, mission staff members have solely the unique manuals written many years in the past to seek the advice of, and people couldn’t account for the challenges the spacecraft are going through as they age.
The Voyager staff desires to think about the entire potential implications earlier than sending extra instructions to the spacecraft to ensure its operations aren’t impacted in an sudden means.
Voyager 1 is so far-off that it takes 22.5 hours for instructions despatched from Earth to succeed in the spacecraft. Moreover, the staff should wait 45 hours to obtain a response.
Because the getting older twin Voyager probes proceed exploring the cosmos, the staff has slowly turned off instruments on these “senior residents” to preserve energy and lengthen their missions, Voyager’s challenge supervisor Suzanne Dodd previously told CNN.
Alongside the way in which, each spacecraft have encountered unexpected issues and dropouts, together with a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn’t talk with Earth. In August, the mission staff used a long-shot “shout” technique to revive communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft’s antenna within the flawed path.
Whereas the staff hopes to revive the common stream of knowledge despatched again by Voyager 1, the mission’s most important worth lies in its lengthy length, Cofield mentioned. For instance, scientists need to see how particles and magnetic fields change because the probes fly farther away from the heliosphere. However that dataset can be incomplete if Voyager 1 can’t return data because it continues on.
The mission staff has been inventive with its methods for extending the facility provide on each spacecraft lately to permit their record-breaking missions to proceed.
“The Voyagers are performing far, far previous their prime missions and longer than some other spacecraft in historical past,” Cofield mentioned. “So, whereas the engineering staff is working onerous to maintain them alive, we additionally totally count on points to come up.”