Voyager 1, which had been sending indecipherable data, has sent a decipherable signal to Earth for the first time in five months, making it possible to check its current operating status
NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth
NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth – Voyager
Voyager 1, an unmanned space probe launched in 1977, has reached a point about 24 billion km away from Earth at the time of writing. Since the start of the mission about 46 years ago, NASA has been tracking Voyager 1, but it has been confirmed that Voyager 1 has been transmitting indecipherable data to Earth since around November 2023.
The undecipherable data was mainly measurements and data reporting the operation status of the spacecraft, which resulted in the current status of Voyager 1 being unclear. NASA, which tried to determine the cause, discovered in April 2024 that there was a malfunction in one of the 'Flight Data Subsystems (FDS),' which package Voyager 1's observation data and operation status.
The cause of the Voyager 1 malfunction that continued to send indecipherable data for five months has been revealed - GIGAZINE
In response to the findings, NASA devised a plan to split the code used by the faulty FDS into sections and store them in a separate FDS. The team first selected a code to package Voyager 1's engineering data, and on April 18, 2024, sent a signal to Voyager 1 to 'save the code in a new location in memory.' However, it takes about 22 hours and 30 minutes for the signal to reach Voyager 1, which is about 24 billion km away from Earth. Similarly, it takes about 22 hours and 30 minutes for Voyager 1 to send a signal to Earth and return to Earth, so NASA received a response from Voyager 1 on April 20.
After receiving the signal, the team confirmed that the plan to transfer the code to another FDS was successful, allowing them to get a grasp on the health and current status of Voyager 1 for the first time in about five months since November 2023.
By Kevin Gill
Over the next few weeks, the team will be migrating and recalibrating the observational data code to a different FDS, as well as migrating the operational code.
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