NASA fastened the glitch that brought about Voyager 1 to ship again jumbled knowledge | Engadget

Back in May, NASA reported that the Voyager 1 area probe was sending again jumbled or inaccurate telemetry knowledge. The probe itself gave the impression to be in good condition, with a sign that is nonetheless sturdy sufficient to beam again info, and nothing was triggering its fault safety techniques that will put it in “safe mode.” According to NASA, the Voyager workforce has not solely figured the issue out since then — it has additionally solved the issue.

Turns out we’re getting jumbled knowledge right here on Earth, as a result of the probe’s perspective articulation and management system (AACS) has been sending again info via an onboard pc that had stopped working years in the past. The pc was corrupting the information earlier than it even went out. Voyager undertaking supervisor Suzanne Dodd stated that when her workforce suspected that this was the problem, they applied a low-risk repair: They commanded the AACS to ship its knowledge via the probe’s working pc once more.

While the engineers have fastened the glitch, they’ve but to determine why the AACS began routing info via the outdated pc within the first place. They consider it was triggered by a defective command by one other onboard pc, which was itself triggered by an underlying situation with the spacecraft. Voyager’s engineers will maintain searching for the issue’s root case, NASA stated, however they do not assume it is going to have an enormous impact on the spacecraft’s operations.

Voyager 1 has been operational for nearly 45 years and had reached interstellar area in 2012. NASA expects it to proceed having the ability to run at the least one science instrument till 2025, after which it is going to maintain drifting away from our photo voltaic system till it loses contact with NASA’s Deep Space Network.