NASA’s Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object in space, is facing a critical situation following a computer glitch that has compromised its ability to transmit essential telemetry data back to Earth.
The nearly 50-year-old space probe, which is currently over 15 billion miles away, encountered the malfunction on November 14, 2023. This has hindered its capacity to relay vital measurements from its scientific instruments and fundamental engineering information. As a result, the mission’s support team in Southern California has been left in the dark about key parameters related to the craft’s propulsion, power, and control systems.
“It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven’t given up,” Voyager’s Project Manager Suzanne Dodd told Ars Technica in an interview. “There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I’ve been project manager.”
Engineers believe that the problem originated in the Flight Data System (FDS), specifically related to “frame syncing” data, and suspect that it may be due to corrupted memory within the FDS. This has hindered the team’s ability to pinpoint the exact location of the FDS memory corruption, as the lack of detailed telemetry data from Voyager 1 has made it challenging to identify the root cause of the issue.
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