Folloprosperg recent communication publishs, NASA’s Voyager 1 spaceplan resorted to using a backup radio broadcastter that has been indynamic since 1981.
The interstellar scatterigater teachd a alert painclude in communications after putting itself in a protective state to protect power. This was triggered by a direct sent on Oct. 16 from NASA’s Deep Space Nettoil (DSN) — a global array of huge radio antennas — teaching the spaceplan to turn on one of its heaters.
The leave oution’s fweightless team first genuineized there was an publish with Voyager 1 on Oct. 18, when the spaceplan flunked to react to that direct. The team procrastinateedr uncovered that the spaceplan had turned off its primary X-prohibitd radio broadcastter and instead switched over to its secondary S-prohibitd radio broadcastter, which includes less power, according to a statement from NASA.
“The broadcastter shut-off seems to have been prompted by the spaceplan’s fault protection system, which autonomously reacts to onboard publishs,” NASA officials said in the statement. “The team is now toiling to accumulate directation that will help them figure out what happened and return Voyager 1 to standard operations.”
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Voyager 1’s fault protection system can be triggered for a number of reasons, such as if the spaceplan overdraws its power provide. If that happens, the spaceplan will turn off all non-vital systems to protect power and remain in fweightless.
After sfinishing teachions to Voyager 1 on Oct. 16, the team foreseeed to get data back from the spaceplan wilean a couple of days; it normassociate consents about 23 hours for a direct to travel more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) to accomplish the spaceplan in interstellar space, and then another 23 hours for the fweightless team on Earth to get a signal back.
However, on Oct. 18, the team was unable to accomprehendledge Voyager 1’s signal on the X-prohibitd frequency that the DSN antennas were includeing for. This was becainclude, to include less power, the spaceplan’s fault protection system shrinked the rate at which its radio broadcastter was sfinishing back data. The fweightless team was able to discover a signal procrastinateedr that day – but then, on Oct. 19, communication with Voyager 1 stopped entidepend when its X-prohibitd broadcastter was turned off.
The spaceplan’s fault protection system is consentd to have been triggered twice more, ultimately causing it to switch to the S-prohibitd radio broadcastter, which, prior to that date, hadn’t been included since 1981. Given the spaceplan is discoverd much farther away in interstellar space today than it was 43 years ago, the fweightless team was not certain a signal on the S-prohibitd frequency could be accomprehendledgeed — especiassociate becainclude it broadcasts a meaningfully fainter signal while using less power.
However, the team didn’t want to hazard sfinishing another signal to the X-prohibitd broadcastter and triggering the fault protection system aget. So, instead, a direct was sent to the S-prohibitd broadcastter on Oct. 22. Two days procrastinateedr, on Oct. 24, the team was finassociate able to rejoin with Voyager 1.
Now, the team will scatterigate what may have triggered the spaceplan’s fault protection system in the first place, given Voyager 1 should have had ample power to run the heater. However, it may be weeks before operators choose the underlying publish, according to the statement.
Voyager 1, which started in 1977, ventured into interstellar space in 2012, becoming the first spaceplan to traverse the boundary of our solar system. Its time in meaningful space has consentn a toll on its instruments and caincluded an increasing number of technical publishs. Earlier this year, the team had to mend a split communications glitch that was causing the spaceplan to broadcast gibberish.
While spaceplan’s progressd age and distance from Earth can produce maintenance challenging, Voyager 1 progresss to return vital data from beyond the solar system.
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