An creative person ’s concept of the Voyager space vehicle . NASA / JPL - Caltech
Having suffered through a foxy glitch , the unbelievable Voyager 1 spacecraft is now operational once again , with data point come in from all four of its current scientific instruments . The spacecraft is almost 50 old age old , having launched in 1977 , and has long since traveled beyond the range of Pluto and out into interstellar space .
The recent issues with Voyager 1 lead off in November 2023 , with aglitch dissemble a systemcalled the flight of steps data subsystem ( FDS ) . This is a part of the space vehicle ’s onboard computer organisation that is responsible for packaging up both the science data ( data from the instruments ) and technology data ( data about the spacecraft ’s health ) for infection back to Earth . After calendar month of investigation , the team disclose the problem was get by a exclusive chip shot that put in information for the FDS , so they worked out a way to store that data elsewhere on other systems .
An artist’s concept of the Voyager spacecraft.NASA/JPL-Caltech
That mess was implemented inApril this year , and two of Voyager ’s instruments come back online at that time : the plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer musical instrument . But two other instrumental role , the cosmic ray subsystem and low zip charged particle pawn , did n’t instantly work , so further tweaking had to be performed to get them track down again . Now , all four of these legal instrument are operate for the first clip in around six months .
That ’s great word for the spacecraft , but the study is n’t finished yet . “ extra pocket-size workplace is needed to clean up the effects of the issue , ” NASA wrote in anupdate , specifying the need to execute tasks like resychronizing the timekeeping systems of the onboard calculator and doing maintenance on the plasma wave instrumental role ’s digital tape fipple pipe .
Now , Voyager 1 will be able to continue its science investigation of the area of space beyond the direct influence of the sun , called interstellar outer space . Along with its duplicate investigation , Voyager 2 , it is the most remote man - made object in the universe , and the two are the only ballistic capsule to operate on outside the heliosphere ( the magnetic field of the Sunday ) . Despite its age and extreme distance from Earth , which makes communications with the spacecraft very slow , it continues to do worthful skill likestudying interstellar gasandobserving energy burstsin interstellar space .
