The Voyager 1 space probe sends “signs of life” after a communication glitch

Optimistic that it will be restored Communication problem Which appeared during the past five months with the space probe voyager 1, It is a mission control team on Earth.

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and its twin, Voyager 2, traveled to unknown The cosmic region along the outer rays of the solar system.

While Voyager 1 continued to send a stable radio signal to the mission control team on Earth, that signal had not carried usable data since November, indicating the presence of… problem With one of the three computers on board the spacecraft.

However, as stated in his post CNNA new signal recently received by the spacecraft indicates that NASA's mission team may be making progress trying to figure out what's happening with Voyager 1. Voyager 1 is currently The farthest spacecraft from Earth At a distance of about 24 billion kilometers.

Meanwhile, Voyager 2 traveled more than 20.3 billion kilometers from our planet. Both are located in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft operating outside the heliosphere.

Originally designed to last five years, the Voyager probes are two spacecraft equipped with Longer operating time in history. Their extremely long lifetimes meant that both spacecraft provided just that Additional knowledge For our solar system and beyond, having achieved their initial goals of flying around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune decades ago.

But both scouts faced challenges along the way as they grew older.

Destruction of cosmic communications

The mission team first noticed a communication problem with Voyager 1 on November 14, 2023, when the flight data system's telemetry module began transmitting a repetitive code pattern.

The flight data system for Voyager 1 collects information from the spacecraft's science instruments and combines it with engineering data that reflects the current state of Voyager 1. The mission control center on Earth receives this data in Binary code Or a series of ones and zeros.

But since November, Voyager 1's flight data system has been “down.”

The spacecraft can still receive and execute commands sent by the mission team, but a problem with this communications module has led to this Didn't move Scientific data from Voyager 1 on Earth.

Since discovering the issue, the shipping team has been trying to charge Commands to restart To your computer system and learn more about the underlying cause of the problem.

The group sent a command called “spur”, on Voyager 1 on March 1 to make the flight data system run different software sequences, in case there is a bug causing the problem.

On March 3, the team noticed that activity from one part of the flight data system stood out from the rest of the corrupted data. Although the signal was not what the Voyager team is used to when the flight data system works as expected, an engineer at NASA's Deep Space Network was able to… Decode.

The Deep Space Network is a system of radio antennas on Earth that helps the agency communicate with the Voyager probes and other spacecraft exploring our solar system.

The decoded signal included a readout of the entire flight data system memory, according to an update issued by NASA.

How are Voyager investigations going?

Voyager 1 is as far away as they need to be 22.5 hours For commands sent from Earth to reach the spacecraft. In addition, the team must wait 45 hours to receive a response. The team is currently analyzing Voyager 1's memory readings after starting the decryption process on March 7 and finding the reading three days later.

As the space agency points out, this process It will take time.

Voyager 1 last had a similar, but not identical, problem with its flight data system in 1981, and the current problem does not appear to be related to other malfunctions the spacecraft has experienced in recent years.

Over time, both spacecraft encountered unexpected problems, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 was unable to communicate with Earth.

As the twin “supersonic” Voyager probes continue to explore the world, the team has been slowly turning off their instruments to conserve power and expand their missions, Voyager project manager Susan Dodd told CNNi.

Aging Voyager 1 sends a startle response after a 'nudge' from the ground. By Ashley Strickland CNN