NASA spacecraft stops communicating with Earth: Groundhog Day

A computer glitch has caused problems in interstellar space

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft encountered a computer glitch that caused a small communications glitch between the probe, which has been in space for 46 years and his mission team on Earth.

Photo: picryl.com

Engineers are currently trying to solve this problem as the aging spacecraft explores uncharted space territory along the outer limits of the solar systems, CNN reports.

«Voyager 1» is currently the furthest spacecraft from Earth at a distance of about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers), while its twin Voyager 2 moved more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) away from our planet. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside the heliosphere, the sun's bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends far beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Initially designed to last for five years, the Voyager probes turned out to be the two longest operating spacecraft in history. Their exceptionally long lifetimes mean both spacecraft have provided additional information about our solar system and beyond since achieving their preliminary goals of flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune decades ago.

But their unexpectedly long lives travel was not without difficulties, CNN notes.

«Voyager 1» equipped with three on-board computers, including a flight data system that collects information from the spacecraft's scientific instruments and combines it with engineering data reflecting the current state of Voyager 1's performance. Mission Control on Earth receives this data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeros.

But Voyager 1's flight data system now it seems to be stuck on auto-repeat, in a scenario reminiscent of the movie Groundhog Day.

The mission team first noticed the problem on November 14, when the flight data system's telecommunications unit began sending back a repeating pattern of ones and zeros, as if it were caught in a loop.

Although the spacecraft can still receive and execute commands, transmitted from the mission team, a problem with this telecommunications unit means that no scientific or engineering data from Voyager 1 do not return to Earth.

Last weekend, the Voyager crew sent commands to the spacecraft to restart its flight data system, but no useful data has yet been received, according to NASA.

NASA engineers are now trying to gather more information about the root cause of the problem before determining the next steps to address the possible problem. elimination, said Calla Cofield, a media relations specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is leading the mission. The process may take weeks.

As Cofield reminds us, the last time Voyager 1 encountered a similar but not identical problem with the flight data system in 1981, and the current problem does not appear to be related to other glitches the spacecraft has experienced in recent years.

Because both probes &quot ;Voyager" undergo new tests, mission team members can only read the original manuals written decades ago, and they cannot explain the problems that spacecraft face as they age.

Voyager crew wants to consider all possible consequences before sending additional commands to the spacecraft to ensure that it does not unexpectedly affect its operation.

"Voyager 1" is so far away that it takes 22.5 hours for commands sent from Earth to reach the spacecraft. In addition, the team must wait 45 hours to receive a response.

As the aging Voyager twin probes continue to explore space, the team gradually turned off the instruments on these «senior citizens» to save energy and prolong their missions, Voyager project manager previously told CNN. Suzanne Dodd.

Along the way, both spacecraft encountered unexpected problems and failures, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 failed. could not contact Earth. In August, the mission team used the long-range «shout» technique to restore contact with Voyager 2. after the team inadvertently pointed the spacecraft's antenna in the wrong direction.

While the team hopes to restore a regular stream of data sent back by Voyager 1, the mission's main value lies in its duration, Cofield says. For example, scientists want to see how particles and magnetic fields change as the probes move away from the heliosphere. But this data set will be incomplete if Voyager 1 will not be able to return information as the flight continues.

The mission team has been creative in recent years with its strategies to increase power supply to both spacecraft to allow their record-breaking missions to continue.

”Voyagers" ; are not performing all of their main missions and for longer than any other spacecraft in history, Cofield emphasizes. – So, while the engineering team is working hard to preserve them, we also fully expect problems to arise.