Voyager followers, rejoice! The 46-year-old spacecraft is as soon as once more probing interstellar house for cosmic wonders following a seven month-long hiatus.
NASA announced that its iconic mission is again to regular operations, with all 4 of its devices returning science information for the primary time following a technical issue that first started in November 2023.
Voyager 1 launched in 1977, so it’s working on classic tech. The storied spacecraft is exploring the outermost fringe of the Solar’s area, combining its observations with information from newer missions to get a greater understanding of how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar house. For many years, the spacecraft has been a dependable supply of knowledge on the universe, discovering new moons, energetic volcanoes, and planetary rings.
Late final yr, nevertheless, the spacecraft began talking back to Earth in unusable gibberish. In March, the crew behind the mission pinpointed the cause behind Voyager 1’s nonsensical data: a single chip liable for storing a part of the affected portion of the spacecraft’s flight information system (FDS) reminiscence.
FDS collects information from Voyager’s science devices, in addition to engineering information in regards to the well being of the spacecraft, and combines them right into a single package deal that’s transmitted to Earth in binary code. When it began glitching, nevertheless, the mission started sending information in a repeating sample of ones and zeroes.
To assist resolve the problem, the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory placed the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory relatively than fixing the corrupted chip itself.
On Could 19, the mission crew carried out the second a part of Voyager’s rescue mission by beaming a command to the spacecraft. Two of the 4 science devices on board Voyager 1 returned to their regular working modes instantly whereas two different devices required some further work, in keeping with NASA. Now, the house company fortunately revealed that every one 4 devices are returning usable science information.
Voyager 1 launched lower than a month after its twin probe, Voyager 2, started its personal journey to house. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 grew to become the primary human-made object to succeed in interstellar house and journey past the Solar’s realm of affect. The spacecraft is at the moment 15.14 billion miles away, which makes its restore operations all that rather more spectacular.
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