For the first time in five months, NASA engineers have received decipherable data from Voyager 1 after crafting a creative solution to fix a communication problem aboard humanity\u2019s most distant spacecraft in the cosmos. <\/p>\n
Voyager 1 is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, and at 46 years old, the probe has shown multiple quirks and signs of aging in recent years. <\/p>\n
The latest issue experienced by Voyager 1 first cropped up in November 2023, when the flight data system\u2019s telemetry modulation unit began sending an indecipherable repeating pattern of code. <\/p>\n
Voyager 1\u2019s flight data system collects information from the spacecraft\u2019s science instruments and bundles it with engineering data that reflects its current health status. Mission control on Earth receives that data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeroes. <\/p>\n
But since November, Voyager 1\u2019s flight data system had been stuck in a loop. While the probe has continued to relay a steady radio signal to its mission control team on Earth over the past few months, the signal did not carry any usable data. <\/p>\n
The mission team received the first coherent data about the health and status of Voyager 1\u2019s engineering systems on April 20. While the team is still reviewing the information, everything they\u2019ve seen so far suggests Voyager 1 is healthy and operating properly. <\/p>\n
\u201cToday was a great day for Voyager 1,\u201d said Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL, in a statement Saturday. \u201cWe\u2019re back in communication with the spacecraft. And we look forward to getting science data back.\u201d <\/p>\n
The breakthrough came as the result of a clever bit of trial and error and the unraveling of a mystery that led the team to a single chip. <\/p>\n
After discovering the issue, the mission team attempted sending commands to restart the spacecraft\u2019s computer system and learn more about the underlying cause of the problem. <\/p>\n
The team sent a command called a \u201cpoke\u201d to Voyager 1 on March 1 to get the flight data system to run different software sequences in the hopes of finding out what was causing the glitch. <\/p>\n
On March 3, the team noticed that activity from one part of the flight data system stood out from the rest of the garbled data. While the signal wasn\u2019t in the format the Voyager team is used to seeing <\/strong>when the flight data system is functioning as expected, an engineer with NASA\u2019s Deep Space Network was able to decode it. <\/p>\n The Deep Space Network is a system of radio antennae on Earth that help the agency communicate with the Voyager probes and other spacecraft exploring our solar system. <\/p>\n The decoded signal included a readout of the entire flight data system\u2019s memory. <\/p>\n By investigating the readout, the team determined the cause of the issue: 3% of the flight data system\u2019s memory is corrupted. A single chip responsible for storing part of the system\u2019s memory, including some of the computer\u2019s software code, isn\u2019t working properly. While the cause of the chip\u2019s failure is unknown, it could be worn out or may have been hit by an energetic particle from space, the team said. <\/p>\n The loss of the code on the chip caused Voyager 1\u2019s science and engineering data to be unusable. <\/p>\n Since there was no way to repair the chip, the team opted to store the affected code from the chip elsewhere in the system\u2019s memory. While they couldn\u2019t pinpoint a location large enough to hold all of the code, they were able to divide the code into sections and store it in different spots within the flight data <\/strong>system. <\/p>\n \u201cTo make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole,\u201d according to an update from NASA. \u201cAny references to the location of that code in other parts of the (flight data system) memory needed to be updated as well.\u201d <\/p>\n After determining the code necessary for packaging Voyager 1\u2019s engineering data, engineers sent a radio signal to the probe commanding the code to a new location in the system\u2019s memory on April 18. <\/p>\n Given Voyager 1\u2019s immense distance from Earth, it takes a radio signal about 22.5 hours to reach the probe, and another 22.5 hours for a response signal from the spacecraft to reach Earth. <\/p>\n On April 20, the team received Voyager 1\u2019s response indicating that the clever code modification had worked, and they could finally receive readable engineering data from the probe once more. <\/p>\n Within the coming weeks, the team will continue to relocate other affected parts of the system\u2019s software, including those responsible for returning the valuable science data Voyager 1 is collecting. <\/p>\n Initially designed to last five years, the Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, launched in 1977 and are the longest operating spacecraft in history. Their exceptionally long life spans mean that both spacecraft have provided additional insights about our solar system and beyond after achieving their preliminary goals of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune decades ago. <\/p>\n The probes are currently venturing through uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun\u2019s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto. <\/p>\n Voyager 2, which is operating normally, has traveled more than 12.6 billion miles (20.3 billion kilometers) from our planet. <\/p>\n Over time, both spacecraft have encountered unexpected issues and dropouts, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn\u2019t communicate with Earth. In August 2023, the mission team used a long-shot \u201cshout\u201d technique to restore communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft\u2019s antenna in the wrong direction. <\/p>\n The team estimates it\u2019s a few weeks away from receiving science data from Voyager 1 and looks forward to seeing what that data contains. <\/p>\n \u201cWe never know for sure what\u2019s going to happen with the Voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going,\u201d said Voyager Project Manager Suzanne Dodd, in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019ve had many anomalies, and they are getting harder. But we\u2019ve been fortunate so far to recover from them. And the mission keeps going. And younger engineers are coming onto the Voyager team and contributing their knowledge to keep the mission going.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first time in five months, NASA engineers have received decipherable data from Voyager 1 after crafting a creative solution to fix a communication problem aboard humanity\u2019s most distant spacecraft in the cosmos. Voyager 1 is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, and at 46 years old, the probe has shown <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Exploring interstellar space<\/h3>\n