Since last November, NASA's iconic Voyager 1 spacecraft has been transmitting unreadable scientific and engineering data to Earth. Engineers have now discovered corrupted memory in the flight data subsystem (FDS), the computer responsible for packaging Voyager's science and engineering data before the telemetry modulation unit (TMU) and radio transmitter transmit the data. We have confirmed that some of these are the cause.
“In early March, the research team issued a 'poke' command that prompted the spacecraft to send back FDS memory reads. This includes computer software code and variables (values used within the code that change based on commands and instructions). state of the spacecraft). Using the readings, the team determined that approximately 3% of the FDS memory was corrupted and the computer was unable to perform normal operations. ”
The suspected cause is a single chip that is not working. This chip is responsible for storing some of the affected parts of the FDS memory.
According to NASA, there are two possible causes of this problem. One is the collision of high-energy particles from space, and the other is simply the age of the silicon, which is 46 years old.
Debugging and repairing spacecraft is not an easy task. Voyager 1 was the first man-made object to enter interstellar space, the outer regions of the heliosphere, or the bubble of energetic particles and magnetic fields from the Sun. In total, it takes him 45 hours from sending a command to the spacecraft to receiving a response on Earth.
Therefore, it will be weeks or months before engineers find a way to make the FDS work properly without the unusable memory hardware and allow the spacecraft to transmit usable science and engineering data again. There is a possibility.
Nevertheless, NASA remains optimistic that Voyager 1 will eventually return to work. This spacecraft was launched in her 1977 year and flew close to Saturn and Jupiter. Its twin, Voyager 2, is also in interstellar space and operating normally, with her communicating with NASA via the Deep Space Network.