After months of sending unusable information to mission management, there was lastly hope for the Voyager 1 spacecraft. NASA engineers have pinpointed the reason for a wierd mission anomaly and consider they might help the interstellar probe make sense once more.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory consider the Voyager 1 spacecraft was sending meaningless information on account of {hardware} reminiscence corruption within the spacecraft’s flight information system (FDS). “The workforce suspects that one chip chargeable for storing a part of the broken portion of FDS reminiscence is malfunctioning,” NASA. wrote within the replace.
FDS collects information from Voyager’s science devices in addition to engineering information concerning the spacecraft’s well being and combines it right into a single package deal that’s transmitted to Earth by way of one of many probe’s subsystems, the Telemetry Modulation Unit (TMU), in binary code.
FDS and TMU are having issues speaking with one another. In consequence, the TMU sends information to mission management in a repeating sample of ones and zeros. NASA engineers aren’t fully certain what broken the FDS reminiscence {hardware}; they suppose that both the chip was hit by an brisk particle from area, or it was merely worn out after 46 years of operation.
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, lower than a month after its twin probe, Voyager 2, started its journey into area. The probe launched into interstellar area in August 2012, changing into the primary spacecraft to go away the heliosphere.
The issue first arose in Might 2022 when the probe all of the sudden started sending nonsense articulation and perspective management (AACS) information. Engineers solved the issue by sending telemetry information by way of one of many spacecraft’s different computer systems. In December 2023 Voyager 1 began talking gibberish once more.
On March 1, the workforce despatched a “poke” to the spacecraft’s information system, a command that lightly prompts FDS to strive completely different sequences in its software program package deal to pinpoint the broken partition. Two days later Voyager 1 despatched a sign containing information from your complete FDS reminiscence.which helped the workforce decide the supply of the failure by evaluating this reminiscence studying with the earlier one to search for inconsistencies within the code.
“Utilizing readings, the workforce confirmed that roughly 3% of the FDS reminiscence is broken, stopping the pc from performing regular operations,” NASA wrote in its replace.
Engineers hope to resolve the issue by discovering a method for the FDS to function usually with out corrupted reminiscence {hardware}, permitting Voyager 1 to start transmitting area information and proceed its journey into deep area.
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