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The Voyager 1 spacecraft is sending back a steady stream of scientific data from uncharted territory for the first time since a computer glitch sidelined NASA’s historic mission seven months ago.
Currently the furthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1 stopped communicating coherently with mission control in November 2023. The probe appeared stuck in a “Groundhog Day” scenario, with the spacecraft’s telemetry modulation unit its flight data system sending back an indecipherable, repeating pattern of billions of people’s code. kilometers away.
A creative solution by the Voyager mission team restored communication with the spacecraft and engineering data began transmitting back to mission control in Aprilinforming the team about the health and operational status of the spacecraft.
However, data from Voyager 1’s four science instruments, which study plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles, remained elusive. This information is important for showing scientists how particles and magnetic fields change as the probe moves away.
On May 19, the Voyager team sent a command to the spacecraft to begin returning scientific data. Two of the instruments responded, but obtaining data from the other two took time and the instruments required recalibration. Now, all four instruments are transmitting usable scientific data, according to a update shared by NASA on June 13.
A long-distance solution
Voyager 1’s flight data system is responsible for collecting information from the spacecraft’s scientific instruments and grouping it with engineering data that reflects the probe’s health. Mission control on Earth, located at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, receives this data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeros.
It took time and some innovative ideas for Voyager mission experts to decode the spacecraft’s twisted code. But once they did, they determined the cause of the problem: 3% of the flight data system’s memory was corrupt.
A single chip responsible for storing part of the system’s memory, including some of the computer’s software code, is not working properly, and the loss of code on the chip has rendered Voyager 1’s scientific and engineering data unusable.
Since there is no way to repair the chip, the team stored the chip’s affected code elsewhere in the system’s memory. They couldn’t identify a location large enough to store all the code, so they divided it into sections and stored it in different locations in the flight data system.
There are still small fixes needed to manage the effects of the initial issue.
“Among other tasks, engineers will resynchronize the timing software on the spacecraft’s three onboard computers so they can execute commands at the right time,” according to the agency. “The team will also maintain the digital recorder, which records some data from the plasma wave instrument that is sent to Earth twice a year.
(Most scientific data from the Voyagers is sent directly to Earth and is not recorded.)”
Long-duration space missions
Meanwhile, Voyager 1 is back to doing what it does best: sharing insights from uncharted cosmic territory.
The spacecraft is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth, while its sister vehicle, Voyager 2, has traveled more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from the earth. The twin probes took off weeks apart in 1977 and, after initially flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, their missions have been extended to 46 years and counting.
Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft that operate beyond the heliosphere – the solar bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends far beyond Pluto’s orbit.
As the only extensions of humanity outside the protective bubble of the heliosphere, the two probes are alone in their cosmic journeys as they travel in different directions.
Think of the planets in Earth’s solar system as existing on one plane. Voyager 1’s trajectory took it up and out of the plane after passing Saturn, while Voyager 2 passed over Neptune and down and out of the plane, Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, said. previously told CNN.
Information collected by these long-duration probes, the only two spacecraft to sample directly from interstellar space with their instruments, is helping scientists learn about the comet-like shape of the heliosphere and how it protects Earth from energized particles and radiation in interstellar space.
Over time, both spacecraft encountered unexpected problems and disruptions, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 was unable to communicate with Earth. In August 2023, the mission team used a long-range “whooping” technique to restore communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft’s antenna in the wrong direction.
“We never know for sure what will happen with Voyagers, but I am constantly surprised when they continue,” Dodd said in April.
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