Launched in 1977, #NASA’s Voyager 1 probe now 24 billion kilometers from Earth. One of its on-board computers appears to be faulty, but ground teams are working on a solution.
This is probably one of NASA’s most iconic probes. Voyager 1 left our planet on September 5, 1977 , a few days after its double Voyager 2 (which took off on August 20). Designed by the American agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the two machines collected data previously unpublished at the time concerning Jupiter (1979) then Saturn (1980 and 1981) before taking different routes.
But since November 2023, Voyager 1 has suffered from a malfunction in one of its onboard computers .
AMBASSADOR OF HUMANITY
When Voyager 1 crossed Saturn in 1980, the choice was made to have it fly closely by Titan, the largest moon of the ringed giant. With this trajectory, the probe will not be able to visit Uranus then Neptune like Voyager 2. On the other hand, Voyager 1 is ahead of its sister and NASA will declare that it has left the Solar System on August 25, 2012 (the probe is then at least as much subject to the influence of other stars as that of ours ).
Today, this robotic ambassador of humanity (she carries a golden disk containing a presentation of our planet and our civilization) continues to collect precious scientific data and transmit it to Earth.
At 24 billion kilometers away , the radio signal emitted with 24 Watts of power is only a billionth of a billionth of a Watt here and requires the most imposing antennas of the Deep Space Network.
A “POTENTIAL SOLUTION”
However, since November 2023 , the flow of data received no longer makes sense . The teams responsible for listening to Voyager 1 and decoding the data transmitted have found the culprit: the FDS (Flight Data Subsystem) .
This is one of the probe’s computers that prepares instrument data to format it correctly for radio transmission. Its malfunction therefore causes a stream of data out of order which cannot be interpreted.
While the situation seemed to be blocked, a specific order was sent on March 1st. It took 22 hours and 30 minutes to reach Voyager 1 and the response arrived on March 3.
On March 7 the decoding work began and on March 10 the technicians noticed that the 0 and 1 received contained code from the FDS memory . Comparing it to that received before the breakdown, NASA shows hope for a “ potential solution ” , while warning that “ putting it into action will take time ”.