A Message from Earth to the Stars
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has resumed sending usable data to Earth after a period of transmitting gibberish due to a malfunctioning chip.
The Fix
- Engineers moved the corrupted code to a different location in the spacecraft's 46-year-old computer system.
- This fix worked within the tight memory constraints of Voyager 1's computer.
Continued Operation
- Despite the glitch, Voyager 1 continued to operate normally.
- Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully received health and status data from the spacecraft.
Next Steps
- The next step is to enable Voyager 1 to return science data again.
- This will involve further adjustments to its systems.
Voyager 1's Significance
- Voyager 1 is currently the most distant man-made object in the universe, more than 15 billion miles away from Earth.
- It crossed into interstellar space in 2012, becoming the first human-made object to leave the solar system.
- Voyager 1's twin, Voyager 2, also left the solar system in 2018.
Golden Records
- Both Voyager spacecraft carry "Golden Records" intended to convey information about Earth to extraterrestrials.
- The records include a map of the solar system, images of life on Earth, music, and symbolic instructions for playing the record.
Technical Details
- The recent problem with Voyager 1 was related to one of its three onboard computers.
- This computer is responsible for packaging science and engineering data before transmission to Earth.
- The computers on both Voyager probes have less than 70 kilobytes of memory in total and use old-fashioned digital tape to record data.
Future Prospects
- NASA hopes to continue collecting data from the Voyager spacecraft for several more years.
- Engineers expect the probes will eventually be too far out of range to communicate, potentially within the next decade.
- Voyager 1 is currently traveling at 37,800 mph (60,821 km/h) and will pass relatively close to a star in the constellation Ursa Minor in about 40,000 years.