The Voyager 1 probe remains to be exploring interstellar area 45 years after launching, however it has encountered a problem that mystifies the spacecraft's workforce on Earth.
Voyager 1 continues to function properly, regardless of its superior age and 23.3 billion kilometres from Earth.
And it may obtain and execute instructions despatched from NASA, in addition to collect and ship again science knowledge.
However the readouts from the angle articulation and management system, which management the spacecraft's orientation in area, do not match up with what Voyager is definitely doing.
The angle articulation and management system, or AACS, ensures that the probe's high-gain antenna stays pointed at Earth so Voyager can ship knowledge again to NASA.
On account of Voyager's interstellar location, it takes mild 20 hours and 33 minutes to journey a technique, so the decision and response of 1 message between NASA and Voyager takes two days.
To this point, the Voyager workforce believes the AACS remains to be working, however the instrument's knowledge readouts appear random or not possible.
The system concern hasn't triggered something to place the spacecraft into "protected mode" up to now. That is when solely important operations happen so engineers can diagnose a problem that may put the spacecraft in danger.
And Voyager's sign is as sturdy as ever, which means the antenna remains to be pointed to Earth. The workforce is attempting to find out if this incorrect knowledge is coming straight from this instrument or if one other system is inflicting it.
"Till the character of the difficulty is best understood, the workforce can not anticipate whether or not this may have an effect on how lengthy the spacecraft can gather and transmit science knowledge," in line with a NASA launch.
"A thriller like that is kind of par for the course at this stage of the Voyager mission," Suzanne Dodd, challenge supervisor for Voyager 1 and a pair of at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, mentioned in a press release.
"The spacecraft are each nearly 45-years-old, which is much past what the mission planners anticipated. We're additionally in interstellar area - a high-radiation setting that no spacecraft have flown in earlier than.
"So there are some large challenges for the engineering workforce. However I feel if there is a option to resolve this concern with the AACS, our workforce will discover it."
If the workforce would not decide the supply of the difficulty, they could simply adapt to it, Dodd mentioned. Or if they will discover it, the difficulty could also be solved by making a software program change or counting on a redundant hardware system.
Voyager has already relied on backup programs to final so long as it has. In 2017, the probe fired thrusters that have been used throughout its preliminary planetary encounters throughout the Seventies - and so they nonetheless labored after remaining unused for 37 years.
The getting older probes produce little or no energy per yr, so subsystems and heaters have been turned off through the years in order that important programs and science devices can maintain working.
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Voyager 2, a twin spacecraft, continues to function properly in interstellar area 19.5 billion kilometres from Earth.
By comparability, Neptune, the farthest planet from Earth, is, at most, solely 4.6 billion kilometres away.
Each probes have been launched in 1977 and have far exceeded their unique goal to fly by planets.
Now, they've turn into the one two spacecraft to assemble knowledge from interstellar area and supply insights in regards to the heliosphere, or the bubble created by the solar that extends past the planets in our photo voltaic system.