Voyager 1 Is Again! NASA Spacecraft Safely Resumes All Science Observations
NASA’s venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft has resumed regular science operations with all 4 functioning devices for the primary time in additional than six months
Artist idea of Voyager 1.
NASA’s beloved Voyager 1 mission is again to regular science operations for the primary time in additional than six months, in response to company personnel. The announcement was made after NASA obtained knowledge from all 4 of the spacecraft’s remaining science devices.
The venerable spacecraft launched in 1977 and handed into interstellar area in 2012, changing into the primary human-made object to perform that feat. Immediately Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are NASA’s longest-running missions. However the title has been difficult to carry on to for spacecraft that have been designed to function for simply 4 years. The growing old probes are caught within the deep chilly of outer area, their nuclear energy sources are producing ever much less juice, and glitches have gotten more and more frequent.
Most just lately, Voyager 1 confronted a communications difficulty that started in November 2023. “We’d gone from having a conversation with Voyager, with the 1’s and 0’s containing science data, to just a dial tone,” stated Linda Spilker, Voyager mission scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), of the spacecraft’s troubles in an interview with Scientific American in March.
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After greater than six months of long-distance troubleshooting—Voyager 1 is greater than 15 billion miles from Earth, and any sign takes greater than 22.5 hours to journey from our planet to the spacecraft—mission personnel have lastly coaxed Voyager 1 to assemble and ship house knowledge with all its remaining science devices, in response to a NASA assertion.
The repair required months of research to trace the difficulty to a specific chip inside the spacecraft’s flight knowledge subsystem. That chip’s code couldn’t be relocated in a single fell swoop, nonetheless, so mission personnel break up the data chip into chunks that might be tucked into stray corners of the remainder of the system’s reminiscence. NASA started implementing the brand new instructions in April. And in Might the company directed the growing old spacecraft to renew amassing and transmitting science knowledge. Voyager 1’s plasma-wave subsystem and magnetometer bounced again instantly. Its cosmic-ray detector and ow-energy-charged-particles instrument required extra troubleshooting, however each are actually lastly working usually, in response to NASA.
And though the spacecraft is again to regular operations, the work isn’t fairly over. To finish spacecraft restoration from the glitch, mission personnel nonetheless have to resynchronize timekeeping software program throughout Voyager 1’s three computer systems and to keep up the recorder for the spacecraft’s plasma-wave instrument, along with finishing smaller duties.
Taken collectively, Voyager 1’s 4 remaining devices supply scientists a valuable glimpse of interstellar area. Voyager 1 and a pair of are the one two operational spacecraft to cross out of the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles that marks the affect of the solar throughout the photo voltaic system. This bubble grows and shrinks because the solar passes by way of its 11-year exercise cycle. Contained in the heliosphere, area is dominated by particles of the photo voltaic wind, whereas exterior of it, cosmic rays reign.
Scientists by no means dreamed that Voyager 1 would have the ability to style these unique particles. Its main science targets have been Jupiter, Saturn, and the latter planet’s rings and largest moon, Titan—all of which the spacecraft flew previous inside a couple of years of its launch. However the mission has survived each problem to proceed trekking by way of the photo voltaic system and into interstellar area, informing scientists about its atmosphere alongside the best way.
