Earlier this year, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was more than 14 Started billions of miles from the earth Send crazy data to NASA. Now space agency engineers have identified and fixed the problem, and no It wasn’t extraterrestrials.
The strange data came from Voyager 1’s Expression and Attitude Control System, which is Responsible for maintaining the orientation of the spacecraft as it propels through interstellar space At about 38000 miles per hour.
The encoded telemetry data means that Voyager 1 was reporting information about its position and orientation that did not match the likely actual location and orientation of the spacecraft. Other than that, the probe behaved normally, as did its partner in crime, Voyager 2. Both spacecraft were launched in the summer of 1977, and Voyager 1 is the farthest man-made object in space.
“The spacecraft is approximately 45 years old, well beyond what mission planners expected,” said Susan Dodd, Voyager project manager. We’re also in interstellar space — a highly radioactive environment where no spacecraft could fly before,” said Susan Dodd, Voyager project manager, when The problem first appeared.
“A mystery like this is kind of normal at this point in the Voyager mission,” Dodd added.
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NASA engineers have now discovered why the Expression and Attitude Control System sends nonsense data. The system began sending telemetry through a malfunctioning computer aboard Voyager 1, and the computer destroyed the information before it could be read on Earth.
YThe Voyager 1 team simply instructed the spacecraft to begin sending data to the correct computer, thus correcting the problem.. They don’t know why the system started sending remote tracking to the faulty computer at first.
“We’re excited to have telemetry back,” said Dowd at NASA JPL. Release. “We are going to do a full read of the AACS memoir and review everything he has done. This will help us try to diagnose the issue that caused the telemetry issue in the first place. »
The good news is that the defective computer does not appear to run on the HAL 9000 on the Voyager 1; Otherwise, the space probe is in good health. On September 5th, the mission will celebrate its 45th anniversary, a milestone reached by Voyager 2 on August 20th.
Since the telemetry issue was announced, Voyager 1 traveled another 100,000,000 miles. It’s a small technical fix for humans, but it does ensure that we can follow the intrepid space probe as it continues its extraordinary journey into deep space.
More: The Voyager 2 team released the first scientific data on interstellar space