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NASA engineers have repaired a “knowledge glitch” on the area company’s Voyager 1 spacecraft. Earlier this 12 months, Voyager 1’s angle articulation and management system (AACS) that retains the area probe’s antenna pointed at Earth started sending incoherent details about its actions and well being to mission controllers. The spacecraft has been in operation for over 45 years.
“We’re glad to have the telemetry again. We’ll do a full reminiscence readout of the AACS and have a look at every thing it’s been doing. That can assist us attempt to diagnose the issue that brought on the telemetry difficulty within the first place. So we’re cautiously optimistic, however we nonetheless have extra investigating to do,” stated Suzanne Dodd, venture supervisor for the Voyager program, in a press assertion.
The difficulty with the AACS occurred at the same time as the remainder of the probe gave the impression to be wholesome, nonetheless gathering and returning scientific knowledge. NASA groups discovered that the probe was sending garbled data as a result of it had began sending telemetry knowledge by means of an onboard laptop that had stopped working years in the past. This defunct laptop was corrupting the knowledge.
In keeping with NASA, Dodd tried a low-risk resolution the place the group would command the AACS to renew sending knowledge to the correct laptop. Though the group doesn’t know why the AACS began routing the telemetry knowledge, it’s possible that the system obtained a defective command generated by one other onboard laptop. But when that’s true, it may imply that there’s a problem with one other a part of the spacecraft. The group continues to seek for that underlying difficulty however believes that it’s not a risk to the long-term well being of Voyager 1.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have been exploring our photo voltaic system for 45 years. Each probes at the moment are in interstellar area, the area outdoors the heliopause, or the bubble of energetic particles and magnetic fields from the Solar.
The Voyager mission’s origin could be traced again to the Sixties when NASA mission designers noticed that the subsequent alignment of outer planets would seem within the Seventies. That is a particularly uncommon occasion that occurs about as soon as each 175 years. Fortunately, on the time, know-how was superior sufficient to reap the benefits of this alignment to fly a spacecraft by Jupiter, Saturn, and the opposite outer planets.
Voyager 2 was the first to launch on August 20, 1977, adopted by Voyager 1, which launched on September 5 the identical 12 months. However since then, Voyager 1 has outpaced Voyager 2. As each crafts started their journey into interstellar area, Voyager 1 turned probably the most distant man-made object in area, which it continues to be at present.
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