Voyager 1 – one of two spacecraft launched by NASA in 1977 to study Jupiter, Saturn and their respective moons – is sending confusing data back to Earth, according to the space agency. The spacecraft’s control system regularly sends telemetry data back to NASA to show its location. But Voyager 1’s engineering team was recently puzzled by the spacecraft’s testimony, which contains confused or inaccurate data. Even more confusing is that the nearly 45-year-old probe is otherwise in good shape – its signal is still strong and the error did not trigger its safe mode. Voyager 2 (sister to the Voyager 1 probe) seems to be fine.
“A mystery like this is something of a normal course for this stage of the Voyager mission,” said Susanne Dodd, project manager for the Voyager program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The spacecraft are almost 45 years old, which is far beyond what the mission planned. We are also in interstellar space, a high-radiation environment in which no spacecraft has flown before. So there are some big challenges for the engineering team. “
Communicating with Voyager 1 is easier said than done. Both probes are now farther from Earth than Pluto – Voyager 1 is approximately 14.5 billion miles from our planet. It takes approximately two days to receive a response from the spacecraft after sending a message, according to NASA.
Dodd said NASA could solve the problem through software changes or potentially one of the spacecraft’s redundant hardware systems. If not, the agency will “have to adapt” to the problem.
Either way, NASA will lose touch with both drones over the next few years when they run out of energy. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 run on plutonium-238, which decays over time. Scientists believe that by 2025, no probe will have enough plutonium-238 to continue to work properly. There is a limited supply of plutonium on Earth and its production is time consuming and challenging. For many years, Russia provided NASA with plutonium-238 until it terminated the agreement in 2015. Fortunately for NASA, the US Department of Energy has resumed domestic production of plutonium-238 at Oak Ridge Laboratory, making a number of current and future NASA possible missions – including NASA’s Perseverance Rover.
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