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04-23-2024, 11:22 PM
I had almost lost hope for the little probe that could.
Absolutely no one could have planned for Voyager 1 to last as long as it has. In a testament to sound engineering and design, our ability to continue to conduct scientific measurement using this probe has exceeded all expectations.
From Universe Today: NASA Restores Communications with Voyager 1
The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally phoning home again. This is much to the relief of mission engineers, scientists, and Voyager fans around the world...
Eventually, they found that the flight data subsystem (FDS) was having an issue. In the spacecraft’s data handling pipeline, this system takes information from the instruments and packages it into a data stream for the long trip back to Earth.
It turns out that the FDS has a bit of a memory problem. The engineers found this out by poking at the computer—literally sending a “poke” command to Voyager 1. That prompted the FDS to disgorge a readout of its memory—including the software code and other code values. The readout showed that about 3 percent of the FDS memory is corrupted due to a single chip failing...
They started out by taking the code that packages engineering data and moving it to a safe spot in FDS. Then they sent some commands to the spacecraft for the FDS to do some tasks. That worked because, on April 20th, they heard back from the spacecraft with clear, intelligible data. Now, they just need to do the same thing with other bits of code so that the spacecraft can send back both engineering and science data.
Let's hope that they can continue to get data from the probe until she finally fails due to power depletion somewhere around 2030.
Good luck Voyager!
Absolutely no one could have planned for Voyager 1 to last as long as it has. In a testament to sound engineering and design, our ability to continue to conduct scientific measurement using this probe has exceeded all expectations.
From Universe Today: NASA Restores Communications with Voyager 1
The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally phoning home again. This is much to the relief of mission engineers, scientists, and Voyager fans around the world...
Eventually, they found that the flight data subsystem (FDS) was having an issue. In the spacecraft’s data handling pipeline, this system takes information from the instruments and packages it into a data stream for the long trip back to Earth.
It turns out that the FDS has a bit of a memory problem. The engineers found this out by poking at the computer—literally sending a “poke” command to Voyager 1. That prompted the FDS to disgorge a readout of its memory—including the software code and other code values. The readout showed that about 3 percent of the FDS memory is corrupted due to a single chip failing...
They started out by taking the code that packages engineering data and moving it to a safe spot in FDS. Then they sent some commands to the spacecraft for the FDS to do some tasks. That worked because, on April 20th, they heard back from the spacecraft with clear, intelligible data. Now, they just need to do the same thing with other bits of code so that the spacecraft can send back both engineering and science data.
Let's hope that they can continue to get data from the probe until she finally fails due to power depletion somewhere around 2030.
Good luck Voyager!
