- NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft launched from Earth in 1977. It handed out of the heliosphere – or sphere of our sun’s affect – in 2012. In all that point, Voyager 1 has been speaking with Earth.
- However since November 2023 – although nonetheless sending radio alerts again to Earth – Voyager 1 has been sending again solely gibberish.
- Some hope appeared in early March 2024, nonetheless, after NASA engineers tried a particular command, known as a “poke” by the workforce. Following the “poke,” the workforce was in a position to decipher a message from the spacecraft, though with issue.
NASA published this original article on March 13, 2024. Edits by EarthSky.
Voyager 1 is beginning to make some sense
Since November 2023, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending a gentle radio sign to Earth, however the sign doesn’t comprise usable information. The supply of the difficulty seems to be with one in all three onboard computer systems – the flight information subsystem, or FDS – which is liable for packaging the science and engineering information earlier than it’s despatched to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit (a knowledge encoder).
On March 3, the Voyager mission workforce noticed exercise from one part of the FDS that differed from the remainder of the pc’s unreadable information stream. The brand new sign was nonetheless not within the format utilized by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working correctly, so the workforce wasn’t initially positive what to make of it. However an engineer with the company’s Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas that talk with each Voyagers and different spacecraft touring to the moon and past, was in a position to decode the brand new sign and located that it accommodates a readout of all the FDS reminiscence.
The FDS reminiscence contains its code, or directions for what to do, in addition to variables, or values used within the code that may change based mostly on instructions or the spacecraft’s standing. It additionally accommodates science or engineering information for downlink. The workforce will examine this readout to the one which got here down earlier than the difficulty arose and search for discrepancies within the code and the variables to doubtlessly discover the supply of the continued difficulty.
This new sign resulted from a command despatched to Voyager 1 on March 1. Known as a “poke” by the workforce, the command is supposed to softly immediate the FDS to attempt completely different sequences in its software program bundle in case the difficulty could possibly be resolved by going round a corrupted part.
2-way communication takes a very long time
As a result of Voyager 1 is greater than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio sign to succeed in the spacecraft. After which it’s one other 22.5 hours for the probe’s response to succeed in antennas on the bottom. So the workforce obtained the outcomes of the command on March 3. On March 7, engineers started working to decode the information. Lastly, on March 10, they decided that it accommodates a reminiscence readout.
The workforce is analyzing the readout. Utilizing that info to plot a possible resolution and try and put it into motion will take time.
Backside line: The Voyager 1 spacecraft – which launched in 1977 and has now traveled out of our solar system – began sending gibberish again to Earth in November. Now engineers have despatched it a “poke” and obtained a message they’ve been in a position to decipher.
Read more: Why are the Voyager spacecraft getting closer to Earth?
Read more: SETI finds sign of intelligence, and it’s our own Voyager 1
