NASA’s longest-running spacecraft Voyager 1 is sending data again to Earth once more for the primary time since November.
Scientists have managed to repair an issue on the probe, which was launched 46 years in the past, after 5 months of silence.
On 14 November final yr, Voyager 1 stopped sending usable knowledge again to Earth, despite the fact that scientists may inform it was nonetheless receiving their instructions and dealing nicely in any other case.
It was first launched alongside its twin, Voyager 2. The pair are the one spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar area, which is the area between stars.
The Voyager probes ship again never-seen-before details about our galaxy. Since they blasted off in 1977, they’ve revealed particulars in Saturn’s rings, offered the primary in-depth pictures of the rings of Uranus and Neptune and found the rings of Jupiter.
An image of Saturn taken by the Voyager spacecrafts within the Eighties. Pic: NASA
Though their cameras are switched off to preserve energy and reminiscence, they’re nonetheless sending again data that may be inconceivable to get anyplace else.
With all this knowledge caught onboard and the spacecraft greater than 15 billion miles from Earth, NASA scientists wanted to repair the issue remotely.
The workforce at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California confirmed in March that the difficulty was with considered one of Voyager 1’s three onboard computer systems. That pc, known as the flight knowledge subsystem, is answerable for packaging the information up earlier than it’s despatched again to Earth.
Inside the pc, a single chip containing among the pc’s software program code had stopped working. With out that code, the information was unusable.
The engineers could not pop over and repair it. As a substitute, on 18 April, they remotely break up the code throughout completely different elements of the pc.
An image of Jupiter taken by the Voyager spacecrafts. Pic: NASA
Then they needed to wait to see if their repair had labored.
It takes round 22-and-a-half hours for a radio sign to succeed in Voyager 1 and one other 22-and-a-half hours for a response to come back again.
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On 20 April, the workforce obtained excellent news. For the primary time in 5 months, they have been involved with Voyager 1 once more and will verify the well being and standing of the spacecraft.
Now, they will regulate the remainder of the pc so it could start sending again extra knowledge.
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Voyager 2 is working usually and heading in the direction of a star known as Ross 248. It will come inside 1.7 gentle years of it in round 40,000 years.
Voyager 1 will nearly attain a star within the Little Dipper constellation in 38,200 years from now.
