Humanitys most distant spacecraft is glitching outagainand engineers are having quite a difficult time solving the problem.
Voyager 1, what are we going to do with you?
The FDS collects data from Voyagers science instruments and takes data on the spacecrafts status and general health.
An illustration of a Voyager spacecraft.Illustration:Caltech/NASA-JPL
In May 2022, the probe suddenly started sendingnonsensical attitude articulation and control (AACS) data.
Engineers resolved the problem by sending the telemetry through one of the spacecrafts other computers.
In the three months between the problem arising and it being resolved, Voyager 1 traveled 100,000,000 miles.
The mission team believes the issue truly lies with the FDS, where the data is actually coming from.
The Voyager team attempted to fix the problem by rebooting the FDS, but that failed.
It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back.
We certainly havent given up, Doddtold Ars Technica.
There are other things we can try.
But this is, by far, the most serious since Ive been project manager.
Voyager 1 is 15.14 billion miles awayand continues to zip along at just over 38,000 mph.
Its been two months, and the issue remains unresolved.
Every message sent to Voyager takes 22.5 hours to get to the probe, and vice versa.
In any case, the Voyager missions are nearly 50 years old.
They served their original purpose decades ago, so every day we get data from them is a bonus.
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