Voyager 1 is approximately 14.5 billion miles from Earth And it continues to rush out of the solar system At about 38000 miles per hour. But NASA engineers working on the 44-year-old spacecraft have recently been troubled by the probe’s hinge and control system, which produces data that appears completely random.
“A puzzle like this is a bit like the course at this point in the Voyager mission,” said Susan Dodd, Voyager 1 and 2 project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, at NASA. release.
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, and was in interstellar space For nearly 10 years. Impressively, the spacecraft continued to send data back to Earth, but its telemetry data recently was invalid; according to NASAHowever, the data simply does not match any real Voyager 1 location and conditions.
FifthOuage’s team continues to examine the Expression and Alien Situations Control (AACS) data; They are not sure if the problem is coming directly from this system or another part of the spacecraft.
“The spacecraft is about 45 years old, which is far beyond what mission planners expected. We are also in interstellar space – a highly radioactive environment in which no spacecraft has flown before,” Dodd added. “There are some big challenges for the engineering team. But I think if there is a way to solve this problem with AACS, our team will find it.”
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Just because the Voyager spacecraft are old doesn’t mean they’re not useful. Data from the probes revealed a previously unknown phenomenon From the interstellar medium, and recently Voyager 1 Detection of oscillations in plasma from deep space. It’s basically a spacecraft equivalent to Tom Brady’s Super Bowl victory in 43.
It is possible that the source of the fuzzy data readout has not been determined, and NASA engineers are simply learning to live with this error. The issue does not affect any of the Voyager 1 science instruments, All are still running after 44 years, The team expects that both vehicles will continue to operate after 2025.
More: The Voyager 2 team released the first scientific data on interstellar space
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