As of: March 28, 2024, 4:51 p.m
By: Tanja Banner
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Illustration: A “Voyager” spacecraft from the US space agency Nasa in space. © imago/Science Photo Library
The “Voyager 1” space probe has not been sending understandable data to Earth for months. But now NASA is reporting a possible breakthrough.
Update from March 28th, 4:50 p.m.:
So far there is no information from NASA that the “Voyager 1” space probe is communicating normally with Earth again - but hopes are apparently high that it will happen again soon. At an event organized by the Committee on Solar and Space Physics, the head of the heliophysics department of the US space agency NASA expressed optimism about “Voyager 1”, as
spacenews.com
reports.
“I feel like we’re on the path to a solution now,” he said. “They are on the right track, and I think we will get to a point where Voyager 1 will continue to fly alive and well in space.” Almost two weeks ago, NASA reported that the old space probe was making some sense again for the first time sent data to Earth (see first report).
“Voyager 1” has been sending “gibberish” to Earth for months
First report from March 15, 2024:
Pasadena - The NASA space probe “Voyager 1” has had communication problems since November 2023. Instead of sending useful data, the aging probe only delivers “gibberish.” The concerns about the space probe, which began operations in 1977 and has long since left the solar system behind, are enormous. But now there is positive news from the US space agency NASA.
On March 3rd, “Voyager 1” sent an unusual signal to Earth. Although the signal does not correspond to the usual format in which the spacecraft normally communicates, an employee of NASA's Deep Space Network telescope system managed to decipher it. NASA announces this. The signal from Voyager 1 contains the entire contents of the FDS memory - the system in which the Voyager team suspects the problem.
Surname: |
Voyager 1 |
|---|---|
Begin: |
September 5, 1977, 12:56 UTC |
Distance from Earth: |
24,356,710,739 km |
Distance from the sun: |
24,372,427,865 km |
Speed relative to the sun: |
16.9995 km/s (equivalent to 61,198.2 km/h) |
simple signal transit time |
22 hours, 34 minutes and 5 seconds |
Source: NASA, as of March 15, 2024 |
NASA receives new signal from defective Voyager 1 spacecraft
The signal sent by Voyager 1 contains the complete code: instructions for Voyager's actions, changeable variables and values based on the state of the probe, and scientific and technical data to be sent to Earth. For the team that has been trying to decipher the mysterious signals from Voyager 1 for months, this is a real treasure.
The next step is to compare this data with what the probe sent before the problem occurred. The Voyager team is looking for differences in code and variables in hopes of finding the cause of the problem.
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A gentle “nudge” in space allows “Voyager 1” to send a new signal
The new signal from Voyager 1 is the result of a command that the NASA team sent into space on March 1st. The so-called “poke”, a kind of gentle “nudging”, was intended to cause the presumably defective FDS computer to test various sequences in its software package. The team hopes that bypassing a corrupted memory section can solve the problem.
The NASA team that manages the Voyager spacecraft will analyze the new data - but this work will take time. NASA emphasizes in its statement: “Using this information to develop a possible solution and try to put it into action takes time.” This is not due to the speed of the “Voyager” team, but because of the enormous speed Distance between the spacecraft and Earth, which is about 24 billion kilometers.
It currently takes 22.5 hours for a signal from Earth to reach Voyager. A response from the spacecraft will take another 22.5 hours to reach the Deep Space Network antennas on Earth. So the team spends most of its time waiting for a signal from Voyager - in the constant hope that the next response will be understandable.
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