NASA’s Voyager 1 resumes sending engineering updates to Earth

For the primary time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable information in regards to the well being and standing of its onboard engineering methods. The subsequent step is to allow the spacecraft to start returning science information once more. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the one spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering information again to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, though mission controllers may inform the spacecraft was nonetheless receiving their instructions and in any other case working usually. In March, the Voyager engineering workforce at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the difficulty was tied to one of many spacecraft’s three onboard computer systems, known as the flight information subsystem (FDS). The FDS is answerable for packaging the science and engineering information earlier than it is despatched to Earth.

The workforce found {that a} single chip answerable for storing a portion of the FDS reminiscence—together with among the FDS pc’s software program code—is not working. The lack of that code rendered the science and engineering information unusable. Unable to restore the chip, the workforce determined to position the affected code elsewhere within the FDS reminiscence. However no single location is giant sufficient to carry the part of code in its entirety.

So that they devised a plan to divide affected the code into sections and retailer these sections in other places within the FDS. To make this plan work, additionally they wanted to regulate these code sections to make sure, for instance, that all of them nonetheless operate as a complete. Any references to the placement of that code in different components of the FDS reminiscence wanted to be up to date as properly.

The workforce began by singling out the code answerable for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering information. They despatched it to its new location within the FDS reminiscence on April 18. A radio sign takes about 22.5 hours to achieve Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and one other 22.5 hours for a sign to return again to Earth. When the mission flight workforce heard again from the spacecraft on April 20, they noticed that the modification had labored: For the primary time in 5 months, they’ve been in a position to test the well being and standing of the spacecraft.

Throughout the coming weeks, the workforce will relocate and alter the opposite affected parts of the FDS software program. These embrace the parts that can begin returning science information.

Voyager 2 continues to function usually. Launched over 46 years in the past, the dual Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in historical past. Earlier than the beginning of their interstellar exploration, each probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.