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+--- Thread: NASA back in contact with Voyager 1 (/Thread-NASA-back-in-contact-with-Voyager-1)
NASA back in contact with Voyager 1 - Maxmars - 04-23-2024
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!
RE: NASA back in contact with Voyager 1 - SchrödingersRat - 04-24-2024
(04-23-2024, 11:22 PM)Maxmars Wrote: 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...
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!
The Voyager missions have definitely been one of the most successful missions ever launched. Hell, they even became a main character in one of the Star Trek movies - remember "V-Ger"?
I think NASA's most successful mission by far was the Cassini Mission to Saturn. The amount of information, data and knowledge we gained from that mission was incredible. Even during it's final flight as it was directed to crash land, it never stopped sending data...right up until the last second.
That probe was a f#cking hero in my opinion.
RE: NASA back in contact with Voyager 1 - Maxmars - 06-12-2024
VOYAGER 1 (AND HALF ITS INSTRUMENTS) ARE BACK ONLINE(From: SkyandTelescope" )
Things are looking better for one of NASA’s longest running deep space missions. After a several-month period of problems, engineers have announced that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is not only back online but also transmitting useful data from two of four science instruments. Work is now underway to bring the remaining two instruments up to operational status.
...
The first test of this approach was to focus on code for the spacecraft's engineering data. That modification was done on April 18th. Voyager 1 is currently 163 astronomical units away from Earth, and a signal takes 22.5 hours (45 hours round trip) to reach the spacecraft. The team thus had to wait two days to see if the fix had taken hold. When they finally saw that it had worked on April 20th, they once again had access to the general status of the spacecraft.
Additional updates allowed the spacecraft to resume sending back science data on May 17th from two of its instruments. Voyager 1’s magnetometer and plasma wave subsystem are now back to returning useful data.
Engineers are currently working to get two other systems back online: the low-energy charged particle instrument and the cosmic ray subsystem.
We used to be able to make things work and work... Voyager 1 was from that time...
