45 years after its launch, continue Voyager 1 Its journey outside our solar system, but now, the spacecraft is sending out strange data, baffling its engineers.
NASA said last Wednesday that while the probe was still working properly, the readings from the Expression and Attitude Control system did not appear to be working. – AACS In short – they correspond to the movements and direction of the spacecraft, indicating that the spacecraft is confused about its position in space.
The longer the system AACS necessary for Voyager To send NASA data as it keeps the craft’s antenna pointed toward our planet.
Susan Dodd, Project Manager Voyager 1 and 2 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement: “An enigma like this is kind of on par with the cycle at this point in the mission. Voyager. The spacecraft is approximately 45 years old, far exceeding what mission planners expected.
و .طلقت Voyager 1 In 1977 to explore the outer planets of our solar system, and has long been working with predictions and continues to send information about flights back to Earth. The pioneering craft left our solar system and entered interstellar space in 2012. It is now 14.5 billion miles from Earth, making it the farthest human-made object..
From what its engineers can tell, NASA said, AACS .’s Voyager 1 It sends randomly generated data that does not “reflect what is actually happening on board.”“.
But even if the system data indicates otherwise, the spacecraft’s antenna appears to be properly aligned — it receives and executes commands from NASA and sends the data back to Earth. She said that the system problem so far has not prompted the old spacecraft to enter “safe mode”, during which it only performs basic operations.
“Until the nature of the problem is better understood, the team cannot predict whether this might affect how long the spacecraft can collect and transmit scientific data,” NASA said.