Voyager 1, the farthest human probe ever flied, has flown out of the solar system and into interstellar space. Recently, however, NASA engineers received a strange string of coded messages from Voyager 1 that was very confusing.
This information consists of a string of repeated binary **, indicating that one of Voyager-1's subsystems is malfunctioning and unable to send any scientific or engineering data back to Earth.
The flight data system is malfunctioning
According to a recent blog post by NASA, one of the three computers on Voyager 1 has a problem that engineers are trying to fix.
The computer in question is the Flight Data System (FDS), which is responsible for monitoring the spacecraft's equipment and obtaining data from these systems, as well as collecting engineering data that reflects the overall condition of the aircraft. Periodically, this data is combined into packets, which are sent to NASA by the spacecraft's telemetry modulation unit (TMU).
The packets sent back are generated by binary ** and are typically rendered as a standard series of 1s and 0s. However, NASA engineers recently discovered that the decoded packets sent by Voyager 1 were duplicated and looked like some of the TMU's functions were "stuck".
The flight path of Voyager 1 and 2.
The conundrum of distance and old**
NASA engineers troubleshooting found that the problem appeared to be internal to the FDS and not to the TMU itself. Last weekend, the engineers at the Voyager team tried to restart FDS, but it wasn't as simple as restarting our computer.
You know, Voyager is about 24.1 billion kilometers away from Earth, and remotely controlling a computer at such a distance is at least a somewhat complicated feat. However, the current attempt to restore FDS is still unsuccessful, and engineers will continue to try. While NASA is optimistic that they will be able to restore normal communications with Voyager 1, it may take days or even weeks.
The Voyager team faced a challenge not only in communicating with a spacecraft drifting in interstellar space at 38,210 miles per hour over extremely long distances, but also in terms of procedures that have now been outdated for decades.
Miles Hatfield of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said: "Finding a solution to the current failure of Voyager 1 often requires looking at original documents written decades ago by engineers who could not have anticipated today's problems. As a result, the team needed time to understand how the new directives would affect the ship's operations to avoid unintended consequences. ”
Once the engineers determined that the instructions could be safely sent to Voyager 1, the engineers had to wait for almost a full day (about 22.).3 hours) for the ship to receive the command. Combined with the response time of the spacecraft's return messages, it would take close to 45 hours to determine whether any one command was successful in eliciting the correct response from the vehicle.
59.500 million kilometers away, the Earth in Voyager 1's lens is just a "dim blue dot".
The legendary Voyager
Voyager 1 is one of NASA's most iconic probes designed to explore the outer solar system and interstellar space. After its launch in September 1977, it visited Jupiter and its moons in March 1979 and passed by Saturn in November 1980 before heading north toward the ecliptic plane of the planets of the solar system. Its twin brother, Voyager 2, continues its flight to Uranus and Neptune after visiting Jupiter and Saturn.
In 1990, Voyager 1 was at 59500 million kilometers away, the lens was specially aimed at the earth behind him, and the famous ** "dim blue dot" was photographed, showing the insignificance of the earth in the universe. In 2012, Voyager 1 crossed the heliosphere and became the first human probe to enter interstellar space.
Voyager 1, which has been flying for 46 years, has given us a lot of surprises and surprises, and we hope that it will recover from the failure again so that we can continue to listen to the space veteran's messages from the depths of space.