NASA’s Voyager 1 continues its journey beyond our solar system, 45 years after it was launched. But now the veteran spacecraft is sending back strange data, confusing its engineers.
NASA said Wednesday that while the probe is still working properly, the readings from its attitude articulation and control system — AACS for short — do not appear to match the spacecraft’s movements and orientation, suggesting the craft is confused. is about its location in space.
The AACS is essential for Voyager to transmit NASA data about the surrounding interstellar environment, as the spacecraft’s antenna remains pointed straight at our planet.
“A mystery like this is part of the course at this stage of the Voyager mission,” Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager 1 and 2 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.
“The spacecraft are both nearly 45 years old, which is far beyond the mission planners’ expectations.”
Engineer works on Voyager saucer-shaped high-gain antenna, July 9, 1976. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA said Voyager 1’s twin brother, the Voyager 2 probe, is behaving normally.
Launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets in our solar system, Voyager 1 has long remained operational beyond expectations and continues to send information about its journeys back to Earth. The trailblazing vehicle left our solar system and entered interstellar space in 2012. It is now 24.5 billion miles from Earth, making it the most distant man-made object.
NASA said Voyager 1’s AACS is sending what its engineers can see randomly generated data that doesn’t “represent what is actually happening on board.”
But even if system data suggests otherwise, the spacecraft’s antenna appears to be properly aligned — it receives and executes commands from NASA and sends data back to Earth. It said the system problem has so far not caused the aging spacecraft to go into “safe mode,” where it only performs essential operations.
“Until the nature of the problem is better understood, the team can’t anticipate whether it could affect how long the spacecraft can collect and transmit scientific data,” NASA said.
Dodd and her team hope to figure out what prompts Earth’s robotic emissary to send unwanted data.
“There are some big challenges for the technical team,” said Dodd.
An important one: It takes 20 hours 33 minutes to get to Voyager’s current interstellar location, so a round-trip between the space agency and Voyager takes two days.
“But I think if there is a way to fix this problem with the AACS, our team will find it,” added Dodd.
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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