Artists illustration of among the Voyager spacecraft. Credit: Caltech/NASA-JPLSince November 2023, NASAs Voyager 1 has actually been sending non-usable information to Earth. Engineers found unusual signals in March, revealing a full memory readout of the onboard computer, offering hints to fix the spacecrafts data transmission issues.Since November 2023, NASAs Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending out a constant radio signal to Earth, however the signal does not include usable information. The source of the problem seems with among three onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is accountable for product packaging the science and engineering information before its sent out to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit.Discovery of New Data SignalOn March 3, the Voyager mission team saw activity from one area of the FDS that differed from the rest of the computers unreadable information stream. The new signal was still not in the format used by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working properly, so the team wasnt at first sure what to make from it. But an engineer with the companys Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas that interact with both Voyagers and other spacecraft taking a trip to the Moon and beyond, had the ability to decode the new signal and discovered that it contains a readout of the entire FDS memory.Troubleshooting and AnalysisThe FDS memory includes its code, or directions for what to do, in addition to variables, or values utilized in the code that can change based on commands or the spacecrafts status. It likewise consists of science or engineering data for downlink. The group will compare this readout to the one that boiled down before the issue occurred and try to find disparities in the code and the variables to possibly find the source of the continuous issue.This brand-new signal resulted from a command sent out to Voyager 1 on March 1. Called a “poke” by the team, the command is implied to gently prompt the FDS to try various series in its software plan in case the problem could be resolved by going around a corrupted section.Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probes response to reach antennas on the ground. So the team got the outcomes of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers started working to decipher the information, and on March 10, they figured out that it contains a memory readout.The group is analyzing the readout. Using that details to devise a prospective option and effort to put it into action will take some time.
