Voyager 1, the furthest human-made object from Earth, has emitted a strange message about one of the parts of the spacecraft that is no longer in operation, said NASA project manager Suzanne Dodd.
The space probe was launched in 1975 by NASA with the aim of exploring our solar system.
What he has done for more than 45 years.
Its powerful cameras have given us the most unusual images of the outer planets of the solar system, revealing never-before-seen details of Jupiter's satellites and the mystery of Saturn's rings.
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However, leaving the gas giants of Uranus and Neptune behind, some of its most sophisticated systems, such as television cameras, were switched off to prolong the life of the plutonium reactor that powers the spacecraft.
Unexpectedly, almost 15 billion miles from Earth (more than 24 billion kilometers),
the probe's sensors indicated that its main antenna had stopped pointing at our planet.
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But that would be impossible, because then the signal could not have reached Earth.
The contradiction points rather to a fault in the sensors that makes one believe that the probe is not aligned correctly.
One possible explanation is that the intense radiation Voyager 1 is exposed to has damaged its data coding system.
But it is also likely that the technology has simply reached the end of its useful life.
"It's gotten old. It's 45 years old. So if you imagine your little clock radio still ticking after 45 years, it's very unusual," Dodd said in an interview with NPR.
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Efforts to repair it have also faced the challenge of deciphering "ancient" technology for modern engineers, who have resorted to decades-old manuals that still include hand drawings and incomplete serial numbers.
In addition to response times of up to 40 hours
, counting how long it takes to get an instruction and how long it takes to return the response.
"It's been a bit of an archaeological quest to get the information we need about spacecraft design," Dodd said.
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Messages from the ancient space probe are becoming rarer.
The only data it still collects and sends back to Earth is about magnetic fields, plasma densities, and cosmic rays.
It is expected that even these messages will no longer be received after 2025, when the ship's systems will eventually fail and it will no longer be able to contact Earth.
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.
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Although its electrical systems will soon stop working, the probe will continue to travel through space for tens of billions of years more.
In that time, Voyager 1 and its sister Voyager 2 will continue to navigate the cosmos.
Without any object to interfere in their trajectory for a few billion years, they will carry with them the golden disc with the message that the nations of the world sent in 1975 to a possible alien civilization that could find it.
