NASA’s Voyager 1 probe calls dwelling after 5 months – Astronomy Now

For the primary time in 5 months, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable knowledge concerning the well being and standing of its onboard engineering programs. The following step is to allow the spacecraft to start returning science knowledge once more. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the one spacecraft to depart the Photo voltaic System and fly in interstellar house.

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering knowledge again to Earth on 14th November 2023, though floor controllers may inform the spacecraft was nonetheless receiving their instructions and in any other case working usually. In March, the Voyager engineering crew 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, referred to as the Flight Fata Subsystem (FDS). The FDS is chargeable for packaging the science and engineering knowledge earlier than it’s despatched to Earth.

The crew found {that a} single chip chargeable for storing a portion of the FDS reminiscence — together with a few of the FDS pc’s software program code — isn’t working. The lack of that code rendered the science and engineering knowledge unusable. Unable to restore the chip, the crew determined to put the affected code elsewhere within the FDS reminiscence. However no single location is giant sufficient to carry the part of code in its entirety.

In order that they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and retailer these sections somewhere else within the FDS. To make this plan work, in addition they wanted to regulate these code sections to make sure that all of them nonetheless operate as a complete. Any references to the situation of that code in different components of the FDS reminiscence wanted to be up to date as nicely.

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

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 from Earth 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.