The Voyager1 spacecraft that NASA sent 45 years ago to explore worlds outside our solar system has begun to send out incomprehensible data that has baffled NASA scientists and engineers.
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NASA spacecraft sends mysterious data from outside our solar system
45 years into its journey out of our solar system, Voyager 1 has sent incomprehensible data that has baffled engineers.
“While the probe is still operating correctly, the readings from the Expression and Attitude Control System – AACS for short – do not appear to match the movements and direction of the spacecraft, indicating that the spacecraft is confused about its position in space,” NASA said.
AACS provides Voyager with the means to transmit NASA data about its surrounding interstellar environment, as it keeps the craft’s antenna pointed toward our planet.
“A puzzle like this is kind of on par with the cycle at this point in the Voyager mission,” Susan Dodd, Voyager 1 and 2 project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. the mission”.
Voyager 1 launched in 1977 to explore planets outside our solar system, and has long been working with predictions, and it continues to send information about flights back to Earth. The spacecraft entered interstellar space in 2012. It is now the farthest human-made object from Earth’s surface, 14.5 billion miles from Earth.
NASA engineers have concluded that Voyager 1’s AACS system is sending 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. So far, she said, the system problem hasn’t pushed the old spacecraft into “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 added.