Concept art of one of the Voyager probes. **Voyager 1, which has been in space for 46 years at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), has recently started "gibberish."
In 1977, Voyager 1 and its twin probe, Voyager 2, were launched, with the initial goal of five years of scientific exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. However, until today, nearly half a century later, these two probes are still moving forward in space, becoming the longest-running space missions in human history.
The latest problem stems from one of the three computers aboard Voyager 1, the Flight Data System (FDS). Voyager 1 is still receiving and carrying out orders from Earth;However, the flight data system did not communicate well with a subsystem called the Telemetry Modulation Unit (TMU) of Voyager 1. As a result, no scientific or engineering data is transmitted back to Earth.
Among other things, the flight data system is designed to collect data from scientific instruments aboard Voyager 1 as well as engineering data on the health and status of the probe. It then combines this information into a single data "package" that is sent back to Earth by a telemetry modulation unit. Data is stored in the form of 1s and 0s (i.e. binary**), and the different combinations of these two numbers are the basis of all computer languages.
Recently, Voyager 1 sent a series of puzzling data to Earth, and began transmitting repetitive, gibberish characters consisting of 1s and 0s, as if "gibberish". The research team tried to reboot the flight data system to return it to its pre-existing state, but Voyager 1 still did not return usable data.
By today's standards, the technology aboard the Voyager is very old. Their computers are only 6963KB of RAM, which is only enough to store a normal JPEG file. To make room for new observations, they must delete the data after sending it to Earth. In addition, finding a solution to a problem encountered by a probe often requires consulting original documents written by engineers decades ago that they did not anticipate today's problems. As a result, the team needed time to understand how the new directives would affect the operation of the probe to avoid unintended consequences.
However, the simple yet rugged design also contributed to the Voyager's long standby time and the ability to switch between different missions to collect valuable data. Both Voyager 1 and 2 have had failures. In the summer of 2023, a human error caused Voyager 2's antenna to deviate from Earth twice, causing researchers to lose contact with the probe for more than a week before functioning back to normal. In 2022, Voyager 1's Attitude Articulation and Control System (AACS) also had a problem, causing the health and status information it sent to become garbled, but engineers finally solved the problem.
Voyager 1 is currently exploring the outer regions of the solar system, more than 24 billion kilometers from Earth, and due to the distance, the command of the mission control personnel needs 22It took 5 hours to reach Voyager 1, which means that it will take 45 hours to determine whether the instructions given to the probe have achieved the desired results. NASA said it could take several weeks to develop a new plan to address the current flight data system issues.
Voyager 1 and 2 both carry a gold disc containing a 1977 burned**, and a sample of human language. When the two probes finally go out, they will continue to transmit messages from Earth in the universe. The only question is?It will take another 40,000 years for Voyager 1 to approach a star, even though it will travel at about 160,000 kilometers per hour.
In 2022, NASA announced the shutdown of some of Voyager's 1 and 2 systems, allowing them to run for as long as possible until they ran out of plutonium. Both detectors are expected to operate until 2030, at which point their data transmission systems and other instruments will fail.
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