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The Voyager 1 spacecraft is sending back a steady stream of science data from uncharted territory for the first time since a computer glitch disrupted NASA’s historic mission seven months ago.
Voyager 1, currently Earth’s farthest spacecraft, stopped coherent communications with mission control in November 2023. The probe appeared to be engaged in a ‘Groundhog Day’ scenario, with the flight data system’s telemetry modulation unit sending back an indecipherable repeating code pattern from billions of people. from miles away.
A creative solution by the Voyager mission team restored communications with the spacecraft, and in April, technical data began flowing back to mission control, informing the team of the spacecraft’s health and operational status.
However, data from Voyager 1’s four science instruments, which study plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles, remained elusive. This information is important to show scientists how particles and magnetic fields change as the probe flies further away.
On May 19, the Voyager team sent a command to the spacecraft to send back scientific data. Two of the instruments responded, but getting data back from the other two took time and the instruments had to be recalibrated. Now all four instruments are returning useful science data, according to an update NASA shared on June 13.
A solution for the long distance
Voyager 1’s flight data system is responsible for collecting information from the spacecraft’s scientific instruments and bundling it with technical data that reflects the probe’s health status. Mission control on Earth, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, receives that data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeros.
It took time and some out-of-the-box thinking for the Voyager mission specialists to decode the spacecraft’s garbled code. But once they did, they discovered the source of the problem: 3% of the flight data system’s memory was damaged.
A single chip responsible for storing part of the system’s memory, including some of the computer’s software code, malfunctioned and the loss of the code on the chip rendered Voyager 1’s scientific and engineering data unusable goods.
Since there is no way to repair the chip, the team stored the chip’s code elsewhere in the system’s memory. They couldn’t pinpoint a location large enough to hold all the code, so they divided it into sections and stored them in different places in the flight data system.
Small fixes are still needed to control the effects of the original problem.
“Engineers will, among other things, resynchronize the timekeeping software in the spacecraft’s three onboard computers so they can execute commands at the right time,” the agency said. “The team will also carry out maintenance on the digital tape recorder, which records some data for the plasma wave instrument that is sent to Earth twice a year.
(Most of Voyager’s science data is sent directly to Earth and not recorded.)”
Long-term space missions
In the meantime, Voyager 1 is back to doing what it does best: sharing insights from unknown cosmic terrain.
The spacecraft is currently about 15 billion miles from Earth, while its sister vehicle, Voyager 2, is more than 12 billion miles from Earth. The twin probes took off weeks apart in 1977, and after initially flying past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, their missions have been extended to 46 years.
Both reside in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft to operate outside the heliosphere: the solar bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends far beyond Pluto’s orbit.
As humanity’s only extensions outside the protective bubble of the heliosphere, the two probes are alone on their cosmic journey as they travel in different directions.
Consider the planets of Earth’s solar system as existing in one plane. Voyager 1’s trajectory took it up and out of the plane after passing Saturn, while Voyager 2 passed over the peak of Neptune and moved down and out of the plane, Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager at JPL, previously told CNN.
The information collected by these long-lived probes, the only two spacecraft to directly sample interstellar space with their instruments, will help scientists learn more about the comet-like shape of the heliosphere and how it protects Earth from energetic particles and radiation in interstellar space.
Over time, both spacecraft have encountered unexpected problems and outages, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 was unable to communicate with Earth. In August 2023, the mission team used a remote “shout” technique to restore communications with Voyager 2 after a command accidentally pointed the spacecraft’s antenna in the wrong direction.
“We never know for sure what will happen to the Voyagers, but I’m constantly amazed when they continue as normal,” Dodd said in April.
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