Voyager 1 sends data back after NASA remotely repairs 46-year-old probe | space

The most distant spacecraft on Earth, Voyager 1, has begun communicating properly again with NASA after engineers worked for months to remotely repair the 46-year-old probe.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which builds and operates the agency's robotic spacecraft, he said in December That the probe — more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away — was sending nonsense code to Earth.

in Update issued MondayJPL announced that the mission team was able “after some innovative investigations” to obtain usable data about the health and condition of Voyager 1's engineering systems. “The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again,” JPL said. . She added that despite the defect, Voyager 1 was operating normally all along.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was designed with the primary goal of performing close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn on a five-year mission. However, its journey continued and the spacecraft is now approaching half a century of operation.

Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in August 2012, making it the first human-made object to exit the solar system. It is currently traveling at 37,800 mph (60,821 km/h).

The latest problem was related to one of the three computers on board the spacecraft, which is responsible for filling in scientific and engineering data before sending it to Earth. Unable to fix a broken chip, the JPL team decided to move the damaged code elsewhere, a difficult task given the outdated technology.

The computers on Voyager 1 and its sister, Voyager 2, had less than 70 kilobytes of memory in total—the equivalent of a low-resolution computer image. They use old digital tape to record data.

The fix was sent from Earth on April 18, but it took two days to evaluate whether it was successful, as it takes about 22 and a half hours for a radio signal to reach Voyager 1 and another 22 and a half hours for the response to return to space. Land. “When the mission flight team received a response from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked,” JPL said.

Along with its announcement, JPL posted a photo of Voyager flight team members cheering and clapping in a conference room after receiving usable data back, with laptops, notebooks and cookies on the table in front of them.

Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who flew on two space shuttle missions and served as commander of the International Space Station, compared the JPL mission to long-distance maintenance on an old car.

“Imagine a computer chip broke in your car in 1977. Now imagine it’s in interstellar space, 15 billion miles away,” Hadfield said. Written on X. “NASA's Voyager probe was repaired by this team of amazing software mechanics.

Voyager 1 and 2 made many scientific discoveries, including detailed recordings of Saturn and the revelation that Jupiter also has rings, as well as active volcanic activity on one of its moons, Io. Probes later discovered 23 new moons around the outer planets.

Because their path takes them away from the Sun, Voyager's probes are unable to use solar panels, and instead convert heat generated by the natural radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity to power the spacecraft's systems.

NASA hopes to continue collecting data from the two Voyager spacecraft for several more years, but engineers expect the probes to be too far out of range to communicate within about a decade, depending on how much power they can generate. Voyager 2 is a little behind its twin and moves a little slower.

In about 40,000 years, the two probes will pass relatively close, in astronomical terms, to two stars. Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light-years of a star in the constellation Ursa Minor, while Voyager 2 will come within a similar distance of a star called Ross 248 in the constellation Andromeda.