In November 2023, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped sending out legible science and engineering information back to Earth. The issue was with among Voyager 1’s 3 onboard computer systems, the flight information system (FDS). The spacecraft got and carried out commands sent out from Earth however might not send out science or engineering information back to Earth.
Now, thanks to some creative examining, the objective group can lastly look at the health and condition of the most far-off human-made item for the very first time in 5 months.
For the very first time considering that November, NASA‘s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning important information about its technical systems. The next goal is for it to start returning clinical information. Just 2 spacecraft have actually ever crossed interstellar areathe big area in between stars: Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2.
The Problem And The Solution:
The group found a malfunctioning chip that keeps some software application code and a part of the memory in the FDS memory. The research study and engineering information spoiled as an outcome. They moved the affected code to a various location of the FDS memory as they might not repair the chip. All of the code might not fit into one area that was big enough to include it all at when.
Researchers developed a strategy to divide the afflicted code into areas and shop those areas in various locations in the FDS. They required to change those code areas to guarantee that they all operated. It was likewise required to upgrade any recommendations in other locations of the FDS memory that indicated the area of that code.
On April 18, the group focused initially on transferring the code that handles the engineering information of the spacecraft to its brand-new area in the FDS memory. A radio signal takes a trip over 15 billion miles from Earth to Voyager 1, taking around 22 and a half hours, and it takes another 22 and a half hours to go back to EarthThe objective flight group confirmed that the modification achieved success on April 20 when they got an action from the spacecraft. They evaluated the spacecraft’s health and status for the very first time in 5 months.
The group is now anticipating transferring and changing the other afflicted parts of the FDS software application, consisting of the parts that will begin returning science information.