Voyager 1's Over 40-Year Journey Revived by Critical Data DownloadNASA Receives Unexpected Data from Voyager 1, May Extend Mission. Credit: newatlas.com

An Unexpected Data Download Gives New Life to Voyager 1

An unexpected data download from one of the computers onboard NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft may give it a new lease on life. The probe, launched in 1977 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is one of the longest active spacecraft, along with its sister craft Voyager 2. They are part of a group of five probes on a path out of the solar system, never to return.

Voyager 1 is a remarkable feat of engineering, having survived 47 years in the harsh conditions of deep space after flying by Jupiter and Saturn in 1980. It was not designed to last this long, but its overengineering and nuclear power source have kept it functioning. However, its radio-thermal generators are depleting and it is expected to only last a few more years, unless NASA can fix a computer issue that arose in November 2023.

The Challenge of Troubleshooting Technology from the 1970s

The issue was not with communication between Voyager 1 and Earth, but with the data being sent back. Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California received gibberish instead of useful information and telemetry. After isolating the problem to the flight data subsystem (FDS), the team had to navigate the challenge of working with software and documentation from the 1970s. They suspected corrupted code and attempted to bypass it with commands.

On March 1, 2024, a command was sent to Voyager 1, which took almost two days to receive due to its distance of over 15 billion miles from Earth. The reply on March 3 was more gibberish, but one engineer at NASA's Deep Space Network recognized it as the FDS memory. By March 10, the team was able to decode the data and discovered it was the entire FDS memory, providing a list of the data that was supposed to be sent, the operating instructions, and the values of the variables affected by commands or the spacecraft's status.

Repairing Voyager 1's Computer for Continued Mission in Deep Space

With this important information, NASA hopes to pinpoint the source of the problem and repair it. However, this is not a guarantee as the team faces the challenge of troubleshooting technology from over four decades ago. Nevertheless, it is a promising development for Voyager 1's continued mission in deep space.

Source: newatlas.com
Ann Castro
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