The Voyager 1 spacecraft despatched a brand new sign that comprises worthwhile knowledge, which can save the growing older probe. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are at present searching for discrepancies within the message as a way to discover out why the spacecraft—the farthest piece of human know-how from Earth—has been talking gibberish for the previous few months.
On March 3, the staff behind the Voyager 1 mission obtained a promising sign from the spacecraft’s flight knowledge system (FDS). Though it wasn’t within the format recurrently utilized by Voyager 1 when the spacecraft is working usually, it was nonetheless totally different than the unreadable knowledge stream that the mission has been transmitting because it developed an odd glitch in November 2023.
The mission staff was initially confused by the brand new message, however an engineer at NASA’s Deep Area Community, radio antennas that the house company makes use of to speak with its deep house missions, decoded the sign and located that it comprises a readout of your entire FDS reminiscence, NASA wrote in a weblog replace.
“The FDS reminiscence consists of its code, or directions for what to do, in addition to variables, or values used within the code that may change primarily based on instructions or the spacecraft’s standing,” the house company mentioned.
Voyager 1 transmitted this knowledge in response to the staff sending a “poke” to the spacecraft’s knowledge system on March 1, or a command that lightly prompts FDS “to attempt totally different sequences in its software program package deal in case the problem could possibly be resolved by going round a corrupted part,” in line with NASA.
FDS collects knowledge from Voyager’s science devices, in addition to engineering knowledge in regards to the well being of the spacecraft, and combines them right into a single package deal that’s transmitted to Earth by one of many probe’s subsystems, the telemetry modulation unit (TMU), in binary code.
The Voyager 1 staff suspects that the continuing anomaly might have one thing to do with FDS and TMU having hassle speaking with each other. In consequence, TMU has been sending knowledge to mission management in a repeating sample of ones and zeroes.
For months, issues have been wanting bleak for the Voyager 1 mission, which has been cruising by the cosmos for greater than 46 years. With the brand new sign, nevertheless, the staff might be able to pinpoint the precise supply of the glitch by evaluating this reminiscence readout with a earlier one to search for discrepancies within the code.
Voyager 1 launched in 1977, lower than a month after its twin probe, Voyager 2, started its personal journey to house. The craft ventured into interstellar house in August 2012, changing into the primary spacecraft to go away the heliosphere.
Voyager 1 is at present 15.14 billion miles away (24.4 billion kilometers), flying at a pace of 38,000 miles per hour (61,155 kilometers per hour). Due to this huge distance, it takes round two days to ship a message and obtain a reply from the spacecraft. So, NASA is asking us to be affected person as it really works to resolve the problem with its iconic mission.
“The staff is analyzing the readout,” the house company wrote. “Utilizing that info to plot a possible answer and try to put it into motion will take time.”
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