The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft has overcome a recent technical hurdle and is now fully operational, with all four of its scientific instruments collecting and transmitting data from interstellar space. The spacecraft, which launched in 1977 and has traveled beyond the orbit of Pluto, encountered a glitch in November 2023 that affected its flight data subsystem (FDS). This system is responsible for packaging and transmitting both science data (from the instruments) and engineering data (about the spacecraft’s health) back to Earth. After months of investigation, the team determined that the problem stemmed from a single chip that stores data for the FDS. They devised a solution to store this data elsewhere on other systems. This fix was implemented in April 2024, and two of Voyager’s instruments, the plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer instrument, were restored to operation. However, two other instruments, the cosmic ray subsystem and low energy charged particle instrument, remained offline, requiring further troubleshooting. Now, all four of these instruments are operating simultaneously for the first time in around six months. While this is a significant milestone, the work is not yet complete. NASA has indicated that additional minor tasks are necessary to address the lingering effects of the glitch, such as resynchronizing the onboard computers’ timekeeping systems and performing maintenance on the plasma wave instrument’s digital tape recorder. With these issues resolved, Voyager 1 will resume its scientific investigations in interstellar space, a region beyond the direct influence of the sun. Together with its twin probe, Voyager 2, it remains the most distant man-made object in the universe and the only spacecraft to venture outside the heliosphere (the magnetic fields of the sun). Despite its age and extreme distance from Earth, which introduces communication delays, Voyager 1 continues to deliver valuable scientific data, studying interstellar gas and observing energy bursts in the vast expanse of space.
Voyager 1 Back in Action: Restoring Science Data After Glitch
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