NASA engineers no longer understand what’s going on on Voyager 1

The operators of the NASA Voyager 1 automated interplanetary station face a mystery: a 45-year-old device that left the solar system ten years ago continues to operate normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, and collecting and returning scientific data, but the readings from the attitude control systems are It does not reflect what actually happened on the ship. portal reports NASA.

The AACS probe’s attitude control systems control its position in space and allow, among other things, data exchange by pointing Voyager 1’s high-gain antenna precisely toward Earth. All indications are that AACS is still operational, but telemetry received by ground personnel is invalid. Everything seems to be randomly generated and does not reflect the possible situations AACS might be in.

This issue did not trigger any of the built-in failsafe systems that should put Voyager 1 in a state known as safe mode, where only basic operations are performed and giving engineers time to diagnose problems. The Voyager 1 signal was also not weakened, indicating that the high-gain antenna remained in its projected position relative to Earth.

Voyager 1 operators are currently trying to find the cause of the anomaly. The spacecraft itself is located at a distance of 23.3 billion km from Earth, signals from it last 20 hours and 33 minutes. This means it takes about two days to send a message to the machine and get a response from it.



Source: Gazeta

Popular

More from author

Serbia opposed the Srebrenica decision at the UN General Assembly 16:06

The vote on the Srebrenica genocide resolution at the General Assembly (UNGA) to be held in July 1995 threatens to devalue the term “genocide”...

IMF warns of difficult times in the global economy 15:54

Global economic growth will fall by more than one percentage point from pre-pandemic levels by the end of the 2020s, and the international economy...

A Russian beat a pensioner with a shovel and stole his food for the sake of his pension 15:55

In the Volgograd region, a man brutally beat a pensioner with a shovel and stole food from him for the sake of his pension....

Analyst listed the vulnerabilities of Patriot air defense systems needed by Ukraine 15:52

The main vulnerabilities of the Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems (SAM) required by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are their insufficient maneuverability and inability...