NASA scientists take to have identify the origin of the hassle preventing humanity ’s most distant emissary , Voyager 1 , from send back its scientific data . However , find the problem ’s precise location , get alone fixing it , is still prove frustrating . A 45 - time of day round - trip for messages to get through does n’t help , nor the fact that only one wireless dish , with other calls on its clock time , is powerful enough for Voyager 1 to pick up it over these distances .
Late last year , Voyager 1 startedsending back a random seriesof 1s and 0s instead of the escape data point system ( FDS ) messages that should have been report its scientific observation .
" The spacecraft is receive and executing control send from Earth ; however , the FDS is not communicate properly with one of the probe ’s subsystems , called the telemetry modulation whole ( TMU ) , " a NASAstatementreported at the sentence . " As a solution , no science or engineering data is being post back to Earth . "
Three months after the job started , with some of the best engineers in the world working on the trouble , it ’s still happen .
In a sealed variety of scientific discipline fiction film , this would be a hint Voyager 1 had become sentient and had either rifle on strike or was asking for aid . In the real domain , it reflects the fact that one of the most potent scientific legal document of all time move on a figurer system that was obsolete soon after it launched in 1977 .
Voyager 1 has three information processing system . In a testament toMoore ’s natural law , their combine processing power would n’t consort a smartphone . It would be staggering if they were still working as well as they are had they been kept in a clean elbow room protected from all kind of radiation . or else , they are now expose to high - energy mote without even the minimal shield of the solar wind .
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The FDS takes the data point from the spacecraft ’s surviving sensors and combines them for post to Earth through the Telemetry Modulation Unit .
" [ The problem ’s ] probably somewhere in the FDS remembering , " Suzanne Dodd , Voyager project director since 2010 , toldArs Technica . " A bit got riff or corrupted . But without the telemetry , we ca n’t see where that FDS memory corruption is . "
“ It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back , ” Dodd added . “ We sure have n’t given up . There are other thing we can try . But this is , but far , the most serious since I ’ve been labor manager . ” Nevertheless , the successfulrestoration of communicationwith Voyager 2 last twelvemonth volunteer Leslie Townes Hope , albeit from an easier problem .
Those ideas let in trying to switch the FDS back to the operating mode it used during its fly - by of the elephantine planets , in the promise this will reveal where in the store the problem lie in . The usually small Voyager team has pull in hoi polloi from other part of NASA to prepare to do this , but Dodd take down the people they want the most are not usable .
" Not to be morose , but a lot of Voyager the great unwashed are dead , " she noted , leaving the current operators to search through archive that have n’t been preserve in the good parliamentary procedure . " We have sheets and sheets of schematic drawing that are composition , that are all yellow on the corners , and all signed in 1974 , " Doddsaid .
If , in a real - life version ofSpace Cowboys , any of the surviving former operators have been holler out of retreat to fix the problem , NASA has n’t seized the promotion potential by revealing it .
Dodd bemoaned the deficiency of a ground - based simulator that can be used to prove program line before they are sent to Voyager 1 . She also noted the commission ’s reject tycoon supply and other fragile parts intend it has n’t suffer too long . There ’s no point taking the delivery endeavour too slowly if it means witness the resolution just before the mission neglect for a different reason .
Despite the weight unit restrictions when they were launched , the Voyagers had two FDSs each , but Voyager 1 ’s backing go in 1981 ( fortunately after it had passed Saturn ) . At the time , most people at NASA thought Voyager 1 had done its job , since , unlike its counterpart , it would not be passing by any further worlds .
rather , both Voyagers havemapped the heliopause , studied ultraviolet sources far from interference from the Sun , and investigated magnetic domain so far from the Sun . Two of Voyager 1 ’s instruments have failed , and five have been rick off by soil ascendence as " no longer precedence " . Four , one less than Voyager 2 , arestill usable , or at least were prior to the FDS glitching . The gaussmeter and cosmic ray system in particular have proven invaluable in the drawn-out deputation . They ’re credibly still collecting data , but need a go FDS to return that data to us .
