Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos greater than 15 billion miles away. However, a pc downside has saved the mission’s loyal help staff in Southern California from understanding way more in regards to the standing of certainly one of NASA’s longest-lived spacecraft.

The laptop glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1’s skill to ship again telemetry information, similar to measurements from the craft’s science devices or primary engineering details about how the probe was doing. As a outcome, the staff has no perception into key parameters relating to the craft’s propulsion, energy, or management methods.

“It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven’t given up,” stated Suzanne Dodd, Voyager undertaking supervisor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. “There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I’ve been project manager.”

Dodd grew to become the undertaking supervisor for NASA’s Voyager mission in 2010, overseeing a small cadre of engineers chargeable for humanity’s exploration into interstellar house. Voyager 1 is essentially the most distant spacecraft ever, rushing away from the solar at 38,000 mph (17 kilometers per second).

Voyager 2, which launched 16 days earlier than Voyager 1 in 1977, is not fairly as far-off. It took a extra leisurely route via the photo voltaic system, flying previous Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, whereas Voyager 1 picked up velocity throughout an encounter with Saturn to overhaul its sister spacecraft.

For the previous couple of many years, NASA has devoted Voyager’s devices to learning cosmic rays, the magnetic subject, and the plasma setting in interstellar house. They’re not taking photos anymore. Both probes have traveled past the heliopause, the place the circulation of particles emanating from the solar runs into the interstellar medium.

There are not any different operational spacecraft presently exploring interstellar house. NASA’s New Horizons probe, which flew previous Pluto in 2015, is on observe to succeed in interstellar house within the 2040s.

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The newest downside with Voyager 1 lies within the probe’s Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), certainly one of three computer systems on the spacecraft working alongside a command-and-control central laptop and one other gadget overseeing perspective management and pointing.

The FDS is chargeable for amassing science and engineering information from the spacecraft’s community of sensors after which combining the data right into a single information bundle in binary code—a collection of 1s and 0s. A separate element referred to as the Telemetry Modulation Unit really sends the information bundle again to Earth via Voyager’s 12-foot (3.7-meter) dish antenna.

In November, the information packages transmitted by Voyager 1 manifested a repeating sample of 1s and 0s as if it have been caught, in accordance with NASA. Dodd stated engineers at JPL have spent the higher a part of three months attempting to diagnose the reason for the issue. She stated the engineering staff is “99.9 percent sure” the issue originated within the FDS, which seems to be having bother “frame syncing” information.

So far, the bottom staff believes the almost certainly rationalization for the issue is a little bit of corrupted reminiscence within the FDS. However, due to the pc hangup, engineers lack detailed information from Voyager 1 that may make them the basis of the difficulty. “It’s likely somewhere in the FDS memory,” Dodd stated. “A bit got flipped or corrupted. But without the telemetry, we can’t see where that FDS memory corruption is.”