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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 derailed NASA’s historic mission seven months ago.
Currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1 apparently stopped communicating with mission control in November 2023. The probe appeared to be caught in a “Groundhog Day” scenario, with the telemetry modulation unit of its flight data system sent an unspeakable recurring code pattern from billions. miles away.
A creative fix by the Voyager mission team restored communication with the spacecraft, and engineering data began streaming back to mission control in April, informing the crew 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, were not found. This information is important to show scientists how particles and magnetic fields change as the probe flies further away.
On May 19, the Voyager crew sent a command to the spacecraft to begin returning science data. Two of the instruments responded, but it took time to get data back from the other two instruments, and the instruments required recalibration. Now, all four instruments are returning usable science data, according to an update shared by NASA on June 13.
A long-distance arrangement
Voyager 1’s flight data system is responsible for gathering information from the spacecraft’s science instruments and combining it with engineering data that indicates the probe’s health status. Mission control on Earth, located 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 outside-the-box thinking for Voyager mission specialists to decode the spacecraft’s garbled code. But when they did, they determined the cause of the issue: 3% of the flight data system’s memory was corrupted.
One 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 the code on the chip made Voyager 1’s science and engineering data unusable.
Since there is no way to repair the chip, the team stored the affected code from the chip elsewhere in the system’s memory. They couldn’t find a location big enough to hold all the code, so they split it into parts and stored it in different spots within the flight data system.
Minor adjustments are still needed to manage the effects of the initial question.
“Among other tasks, software engineers will resynchronize time in three computers on board the spacecraft so they can execute commands at the right time,” according to the agency. “The team will also maintain the digital tape recorder, which records some data for the plasma wave instrument sent to Earth twice a year.
(Most of the Voyagers’ science data is sent directly to Earth and not recorded.)”
Long space missions
Meanwhile, Voyager 1 is back doing what it does best: Sharing insights from uncharted cosmic territory.
The spacecraft is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, while its sister vehicle, Voyager 2, has traveled more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from Earth. The pair of probes ended weeks apart in 1977, and after first flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, their missions extended to 46 years and counting.
Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft that operate beyond the helisphere – the Sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends far beyond Pluto’s orbit.
As the lone extensions of humanity outside the protective bubble of the helisphere, the two explorers are alone on their cosmic tribe as they travel in different directions.
Think of the planets of Earth’s solar system as being in one plane. Voyager 1’s trajectory took it up and out of the plane after passing Saturn, and Voyager 2 passed over the top of Neptune and moved down and out of the plane, Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, previously told CNN.
The information gathered by these long-lived probes, the only two spacecraft to directly sample interstellar space with their instruments, helps scientists learn about the cometlike shape of the heliosphere and how it protects Earth from energetic particles and from radiation in interstellar space.
Over time, both spacecraft have encountered unexpected issues and crashes, 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-shot “smile” technique to re-establish communications with Voyager 2 after the spacecraft’s antenna command was inadvertently pointed in the wrong direction.
“We never know for sure what will happen with the Voyagers, but it always amazes me when they go on,” Dodd said in April.
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