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The Voyager 1 spacecraft is sending back a steady stream of scientific data from unexplored regions for the first time since a computer glitch sidelined the historic NASA mission seven months ago.
Voyager 1, currently the furthest spacecraft from Earth, stopped communicating consistently with mission control in November 2023. The probe appeared to be caught in a “Groundhog Day” scenario, with the flight data system’s telemetry modulation unit sending back an indecipherably repeated code pattern from billions of codes. miles away.
A creative fix by the Voyager mission team restored communications with the spacecraft, and engineering data began being sent back to mission control in April, keeping the team informed of the spacecraft’s health and operational status.
But data from Voyager 1’s four scientific instruments examining plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles have remained elusive. This information is important to show 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 sending science data. Two of the devices responded, but getting data from the other two took time and required recalibration of the devices. According to an update shared by NASA on June 13, all four instruments are now sending back usable science data.
A long distance fix
Voyager 1’s flight data system is responsible for collecting information from the spacecraft’s science instruments and combining it with engineering data that reflects the health of the probe. Mission control on Earth, located at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, receives this data in binary code, or a string of ones and zeros.
It took time and outside-the-box thinking for Voyager mission experts to decipher the spacecraft’s broken code. Only after doing so did they determine the cause of the problem: 3% of the flight data system’s memory was corrupted.
The single chip responsible for storing some of the computer’s system memory, including part of the computer’s software code, is not working properly, and the loss of the on-chip code causes Voyager 1’s science and engineering data to become unusable.
Since there was no way to repair the chip, the team stored the affected code on the chip elsewhere in the system’s memory. They couldn’t pinpoint a location large enough to hold the entire code, so they split it into sections and stored them at different points within the flight data system.
Minor fixes still need to be made to manage the effects of the initial issue.
“Among other tasks, engineers will resynchronize the timekeeping software in 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 that records some of the data of the plasma wave device sent to Earth twice a year.
(Most of the Voyagers’ science data is sent directly to Earth and is not recorded.)”
Long-lasting space missions
Meanwhile, Voyager 1 is back to what it does best: sharing insights from uncharted cosmic regions.
The spacecraft is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, while its sister craft, Voyager 2, has traveled more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from Earth. The twin probes took off within weeks of each other in 1977, and after initially flying past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, their missions were extended to 46 years and counting.
Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft operating beyond the heliosphere (the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends far beyond Pluto’s orbit).
The two probes, humanity’s only extensions outside the protective bubble of the heliosphere, are alone on their cosmic journey as they travel in different directions.
Consider that the planets in Earth’s solar system lie on a single plane. Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager at JPL, previously told CNN that Voyager 1’s orbit went up and out of the plane after passing Saturn, while Voyager 2 passed over the top of Neptune and went down and out of the plane. .
The information collected by these long-lived probes, the only two spacecraft to directly sample interstellar space with their instruments, helps scientists learn 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 encountered unexpected problems and disruptions; This includes a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 was unable to communicate with Earth. In August 2023, the mission team used the long-shot “shout” technique to restore communications with Voyager 2 after a command accidentally directed the spacecraft’s antenna in the wrong direction.
“We never know for sure what will happen to the Voyagers, but it continually amazes me that they keep going,” Dodd said in April.
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