“Basically, it no longer speaks to us in a consistent way.”
old man probe
NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft have been traveling far into space for almost half a century.
The spacecraft were launched less than a month apart in the summer of 1977. decreasing power supply and dirty thruster A fatal software glitch may occur.
Voyager 1, in particular, currently floats some 15 billion miles beyond the commonly defined edge of the solar system, and appears to have suffered significant wear and tear recently.
Most recently, scientists became concerned when a lone probe began sending meaningless messages to Earth, as if its age was catching up with it.
“Basically, it no longer speaks to us in a consistent way,” says Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd. Said NPR. “That’s a serious problem.”
nonsense code
Instead of transmitting binary code across billions of miles, Voyager 1 alternates between 1s and 0s.
Attempts to reset the aging probe have so far failed, which is not surprising given that the technology dates back to the mid-1970s.
“The button you press to open your car door has more computing power than the Voyager spacecraft,” Dodd said. NPR. “It’s amazing that they continue to fly and have continued to fly for over 46 years.”
Meanwhile, back on the ground, the team is “getting inside the heads of the original developers and trying to figure out why they designed it the way they did” to find ways to fix the spacecraft, Dodd said. Told.
Over the next few months, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will try various approaches to returning Voyager 1 to science.
“We haven’t had any scientific data since this anomaly started,” said Stella Ocker, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. NPR“And what that means is we don’t know what the environment the spacecraft will be passing through is like.”
The plutonium reserves that power the spacecraft are also starting to run low, prompting spacecraft operators to take steps to maintain dwindling power supplies.
“For a long time, my motto was 50 years or fail,” said astronomer Stamatios Krimigis, who worked on the Voyager 1 mission from the beginning. NPR“But we’re getting close to it.”
Voyager details: The situation for Voyager 1 seems to be quite severe.