NASA still has a difficulty with its Voyager 1 interstellar probe. The mission does not return usable data. Fixing the problem could take weeks.
Houston, we have a problem. NASA, which recently sent a risky interstellar patch to its two Voyager probes, is now no longer able to communicate correctly with one of them. It’s Voyager 1 that’s in trouble, indicated NASA in a tweet on December 12, 2023. The concern affects “ flight data system » of the interstellar probe, launched into space 46 years ago.
“ The spacecraft receives and executes commands sent from Earth, but does not return usable data », According to the American space agency. To better understand the extent of the problem, remember that Voyager 1 is currently at more than 24 billion kilometers of the Earth. It takes 22 hours and 34 minutes to send a command to Voyager 1, and the same to receive the data it returns. That’s a total of 45 hours to wait to find out if a correction sent to Voyager 1 worked.
Voyager 1 does not send scientific or technical data
What exactly is wrong with Voyager 1? NASA provides more details in a blog post. The famous flight data system affected by the problem is one of the probe’s 3 onboard computers. “ The flight data system is not communicating properly with one of the probe’s subsystems, called the telecommunications unit. Therefore, no scientific or technical data is sent to Earth. »
The flight data system has, among other activities, two important tasks: collecting scientific data from the instruments, as well as data on the status of Voyager 1. ” It then combines this information into a single data ‘packet’ which will be sent to Earth by the telecommunications unit », Explains NASA. When data is transmitted, it takes the form of a binary code, composed of the numbers 1 and 0. However, “ recently the telecommunications unit started transmitting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros, as if it was ‘stuck’ “.
NASA could take weeks to resolve the glitch
To resolve the problem, the teams have already tried a first solution. The telecommunications unit was restarted during the weekend of December 9 and 10. However, this did not resolve the problem, and Voyager 1 continues to send back bizarre data. NASA does not rule out taking weeks before finally remedying the bug in its interstellar probe.
This isn’t the first time this legendary mission has been in trouble. The interstellar probe Voyager 1 had already experienced a strange malfunction in 2022. Finally, the teams had found what was wrong with Voyager 1: it had the wrong on-board computer. More recently, it was Voyager 2 which gave the teams a cold sweat: during the summer of 2023, NASA lost Voyager 2, and it was its fault. Everything finally ended well for the interstellar mission, Voyager 2 ended up transmitting again.
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