The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has been in service with NASA for 46 years, suffered a computer glitch that disrupted communication with Earth after a series of 1 and 0 repeats were launched. Engineers are currently trying to solve this problem, and it looks like there is little hope.
Voyager 1 is currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth, at a distance of about 15 billion miles (about 24 billion kilometers), while Voyager 1's twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, is more than 20 billion kilometers from Earth. Both spacecraft are active in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside the heliosphere.
You can think of the heliosphere as a bubble of the Sun's magnetic field and particles that extends beyond Pluto's orbit. To put it more technically, it is the area of space that is affected by the solar wind and magnetic fields.
The Voyager probes were originally designed to last five years, but today they are two of the longest-running spacecraft in history. The long service life meant additional gains, and over the course of a few decades, the two Voyagers achieved their initial goal of flying over Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, giving us more knowledge about the solar system and beyond.
But to be able to serve for such a long time, it is impossible to say that there will be no problems.
In the case of Voyager 1, which had problems this time, there were three computers on board, including a flight data system. This system is responsible for collecting information from the scientific instruments of the spacecraft and bundling it with engineering data that reflects the condition of the spacecraft to be sent to Earth.
The problem now is that this flight data system seems to have collapsed and is stuck in an automatic endless loop. Beginning on November 14, local time in the United States, Voyager 1 sent a series of repeated 1 and 0 data to Earth.
While Voyager 1 could theoretically still receive and carry out the mission team's orders, no matter what it did, it was unable to relay scientific and engineering data back to Earth. Over the weekend, the mission team had issued instructions to Voyager 1 to restart the spacecraft's flight data system, but as of press time, no data had been returned. Theoretically, it would take 45 hours from the time the mission team sends the message to the time it finally receives feedback from Voyager 1.
Corfield, a media relations specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the media that engineers are working to gather more information about the issue and decide on possible corrective action next, a process that could take weeks. The last time Voyager 1 had a similar problem was in 1981, Cofield said, but the current problem is not exactly the same as the last time it was encountered, and it has nothing to do with other failures Voyager 1 has encountered in recent years.
Because the two Voyagers were in service for far longer than expected, the mission team members had only original manuals written decades ago to refer to, but what was decades old simply did not explain the challenges faced by the spacecraft as it aged.
In fact, in recent years, in order to further extend the service life of the two Voyagers, the mission team has begun to phase down some of the instruments on the Voyager in order to conserve power and extend their service life.
Voyager 2 has not been without its problems, and in 2020, Voyager 2 lost contact with Earth for seven months. On July 21 of this year, due to the wrong instructions of the mission team, the antenna position of Voyager 2 was deviated, and it was also unable to communicate with Earth for a while, and NASA later used a long interstellar call command to re-establish contact with Voyager 2.
"Voyager has been in service far longer than expected, surpassing all spacecraft in history," Corfield said. Our engineering team will try to keep them working, but problems are expected. ”
Voyager 1 is an unmanned outer solar system space probe developed by NASA, with a mass of 815 kilograms, and is expected to last until 2040. Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, passed Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980, providing high-resolution images of Jupiter, Saturn, and its moons. In May 2012, Voyager 1 had already reached the edge of the solar system, and in the early morning of September 13, 2013, NASA officially confirmed through a press conference that Voyager 1 entered interstellar space, but was still in the solar system.
In 2014, NASA announced that Voyager 1 had left the solar system, becoming the first human-built vehicle to break out of the solar system.
In addition to the detection equipment, Voyager 1 also carried a record that retains sound quality even after 1 billion years, with greetings and various music recorded in 55 human languages, including Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, and Wu.