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Engineers have despatched a “poke” to the Voyager 1 probe and acquired a doubtlessly encouraging response as they hope to repair a communication concern with the getting older spacecraft that has continued for 5 months.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are venturing by way of uncharted cosmic territory alongside the outer reaches of the photo voltaic system.
Whereas Voyager 1 has continued to relay a gentle radio sign to its mission management workforce on Earth, that sign has not carried any usable knowledge since November, which has pointed to a difficulty with one of many spacecraft’s three onboard computer systems.
A brand new sign just lately acquired 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 reaching 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 concern with Voyager 1 on November 14, 2023, when the flight knowledge system’s telemetry modulation unit started sending a repeating sample of code.
Voyager 1’s flight knowledge system collects info from the spacecraft’s science devices and bundles it with engineering knowledge that displays the present well being standing of Voyager 1. Mission management on Earth receives that knowledge in binary code, or a collection of ones and zeroes.
However since November, Voyager 1’s flight knowledge 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 knowledge from Voyager 1 was transmitting to Earth.
Since discovering the problem, the mission workforce has tried sending instructions to restart the pc system and study extra in regards to the underlying reason for the problem.
The workforce despatched a command, referred to as a “poke,” to Voyager 1 on March 1 to get the flight knowledge system to run totally different software program sequences in case some kind of glitch was inflicting the problem.
On March 3, the workforce seen that exercise from one a part of the flight knowledge system stood out from the remainder of the garbled knowledge. Whereas the sign wasn’t within the format the Voyager workforce is used to when the flight knowledge 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 whole flight knowledge system’s reminiscence, in keeping with an replace NASA shared.
“The (flight knowledge system) reminiscence contains 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 keeping with a NASA weblog submit. “It additionally incorporates science or engineering knowledge for downlink. The workforce will examine this readout to the one which got here down earlier than the problem arose and search for discrepancies within the code and the variables to doubtlessly discover the supply of the continuing concern.”
Voyager 1 is so far-off that it takes 22.5 hours for instructions despatched from Earth to achieve 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 info to plan a possible resolution and try to put it into motion will take time,” in keeping with the area company.
The final time Voyager 1 skilled an identical, however not equivalent, concern with the flight knowledge system was in 1981, and the present drawback doesn’t seem like related to different glitches the spacecraft has skilled in recent times.
Over time, each spacecraft have encountered surprising points and dropouts, together with a seven-month interval in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn’t talk with Earth. In August 2023, the mission workforce used a long-shot “shout” method to revive communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft’s antenna within the flawed route.
Because the getting older twin Voyager probes proceed exploring the cosmos, the workforce has slowly turned off devices on these “senior residents” to preserve energy and prolong their missions, Voyager’s mission supervisor Suzanne Dodd beforehand informed CNN.