by It’s been several months since one of mankind’s most capable spacecraft, the Voyager 1 probe, stopped talking to us—and while they’re still a little hopeful, Voyager mission scientists are preparing for the worst: Goodbye.
“Sad and frustrated with the spacecraft still working, but muted,” Bruce Waggoner, Voyager’s mission statement manager, told Space.com about the group’s current morale. “Although we know the end could come at any moment, losing a spacecraft is never easy. Voyager 1.”
For more than 45 years, this boxy machine with a conical white pearl disc that makes it look like a giant speaker in space has been sending back amazing data. And I mean stunning. Not only is it the first craft to enter interstellar space (and therefore the longest human object ever), but is also responsible for identifying new Jovian moons, finding another Saturnian ring and the Solar systemthe first and only “family portrait” that encompasses our eclectic group of planets.
Related: NASA’s Voyager 1 interstellar spacecraft isn’t doing so well – here’s what we know
It is also why we are the powerful Bright Blue Dot an image that resurfaces on the Internet many times to remind us of our insignificance, or our importance, depending on your perspective. As Carl Sagan famously said, “Look at that point again. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”
All this time, Voyager 1’s cosmic letters came through as computer messages often do, with 0’s and 1’s in precise patterns. With a little work, such sequences can be translated into words that the human mind can understand – and scientists have always been excited to open a new package of Voyager 1’s binary code.
But then, in September last year, the 0’s and 1’s stop making sense.
“Effectively, the call is between the spacecraft and the World It was still connected, but Voyager’s ‘voice’ was replaced by a monotonous dial tone,” the engineering team told Space.com.
Voyager 1 has had glitches before, such as in 2022 when the probe’s “attitude communication and control system” showed some difficulties, but this one seems like a doozy. The team has still not been able to solve it, even months since the issue surfaced, and they are still searching for the root of the problem.
So there is time to call the final curtain on Voyager 1?
Well, for that, scientists aren’t quite sure yet. They are still working to remedy the situation — and diligently at that. “The team is tired because we have been walking at a brisk pace for 3 months now, but we are pushing forward because we have ideas, and we have hope,” Voyager mission engineer Kareem Badaruddin told Space.com.
However, what is the team yes It is certain that even if Voyager 1 succumbs to its wound, the journey is certainly not over.
“Do not forget Game Voyager 2 still going strong! If we can keep one spacecraft going, the mission will continue,” the team said.
Voyager 2, which looks a lot like Voyager 1, actually sent 16 days before its counterpart, on August 20, 1977. Voyager 1 happened to go faster because it had a more efficient way out of the asteroid belt, officially overtaking his partner on December 15, 1977 and later became the first probe to leave the gravitational influence of our solar system. Voyager 2 has many achievements under its belt, however, as it remains the only spacecraft to have visited the outer planets, Uranus and Neptune.
Together, the Voyagers’ joint mission was simply to explore – to go through the solar system, past the moons and planets beyond our own and to try to go where no spacecraft had gone before.
“The Voyagers are the only spacecraft that do exploration interstellar space in-situ, and there are no missions that can collect the same data remotely,” the team said.
They are certainly doing their job, and hopefully Voyager 1 has a little more juice left. But even if it doesn’t, scientists want to make it clear that Voyager 2 will continue to keep the torch burning.
Free Voyager 1 medical chart,
In December 2023, the crew of Voyager 1 announced that the spacecraft’s malfunction lies with its Flight Data System, or FDS, which is one of its onboard computers. There used to be a backup FDS, but that stopped working in 1981.
“Due to this issue, scientists are not receiving any scientific data or updates about the probe’s health and status, including information that could reveal the source of the problem,” the team explains.
This is where the biggest difficulty with this dilemma comes in. One of the main jobs of the FDS is to keep Voyager 1’s medical records up to date, then work with the telemetry modulation unit, or TMU, to tell ground control what’s there. going forward. But, because the only malfunction is the FDS itself, the transmission of medical records cannot happen.
“The team has tried various ‘simple’ solutions, such as resetting the FDS to the state it was in before the issue started,” said the engineers. “This week, the team will send more commands to the spacecraft to gather information about the status of the systems on board. In the coming weeks, the team expects to begin making more aggressive efforts to identify various systems that may be affected to play the FDS reset.”
So far, the team believes that one cause of the FDS memory issue is being corrupted by some mechanism that gives its binary code incomprehensible patterns. However, engineers are also thinking about the fact that it could be a physical hardware failure. After all, Voyager 1’s mechanics have been working for decades. Something could simply be broken down, hardware or software wise. In fact, scientists sent some preemptive software patches to the two Voyagers last year, from billions of miles away.
“The anomaly caused us to study the spacecraft and learn about it – a lot of information was found that had been forgotten because it was not needed for many years,” said Badauuddin.
In a slightly more extensive scenario, the team also suggests that some energetic particle may have smashed into the spacecraft. If that happened, it might have created something called a “bit flip,” meaning that a 0 in the code accidentally became a 1, or vice versa.
Still, the team is leaving all possibilities open. That’s because, in truth, the FDS may not even be causing problems in the first place. This theory is only the most likely one that arose from the data that the engineers currently have. “Because there is no engineering data coming back, it is very difficult to isolate the source of the problem” they said.
Also, while you’re a bit of a silver lining, remember Voyager 1’s greatest achievement was being the first probe ever to enter interstellar space, where it’s surrounded by unsettled stardust and blankets of darkness? Yes, it is extremely far away from us. And that means it takes a very long (very long) time to communicate with him. Specifically, at the time of writing this article, Voyager 1 is more than 162 AU from Earth; one AU is equal to the distance between our planet and the sun. In total, it takes about 45 hours to complete one round-trip order with this spacecraft. Therefore, “this process could take months,” said the team.
To give you a silver lining, however, scientists have confirmed that Voyager 1 is exhibiting something called a carrier tone, which runs along a wavelength that does not carry information but acts as a heartbeat. At least we know he’s alive.
“The spacecraft appears to be healthy other than the current issue. So if we can fix this, Voyager 1 should be able to continue its science mission,” the team said. “But the Voyagers have already been operating much, much longer than anyone expected. We know that the more time that passes, the more likely issues will arise. We will keep them going as far as we can, but we know them. won’t last forever.”
Related Stories:
— Voyager 2: Iconic spacecraft still exploring 45 years later
— NASA’s interstellar Voyager probes receive software updates broadcast from 12 billion miles away
— NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft extends its interstellar science mission for another 3 years
“If V1 didn’t make it? I would be very proud; the mission far exceeded the expectations of the designers,” said Badauddin. “But really, that’s hard to judge because we still believe we can recover.”
Alas, fingers crossed that Voyager 1 returns to its healthy self – but even if it doesn’t, left alone to drift in space, we can be sure that its legacy is already firmly cemented in our books, in our hearts and in our hearts. our history.
Then it will be up to you, Voyager 2.
