The engineering team operating the Voyager 1 spacecraft – NASA’s robotic planetary explorer, which is currently approaching interstellar space – is trying to understand why the spacecraft is sending back readings of data that do not match what the vehicle is actually doing. It’s a mystery that doesn’t seem to put Voyager 1 in imminent danger, but NASA is trying to figure it out nonetheless.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 has been exploring space for nearly half a century. It has a twin, Voyager 2, which was launched 16 days earlier that year. Both spacecraft orbited the outer solar system, flying planets and capturing moons before finally traveling beyond our space neighborhood. In 2012, Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, the boundary where the Sun’s solar wind ends and the interstellar medium begins. At a distance of 14.5 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object in space.
This is a mystery that does not seem to expose Voyager 1 to imminent danger
But the further Voyager 1 moves away from Earth, the more likely strange things happen to the spacecraft. The spacecraft’s articulation and control system, or AACS, is currently in place. This is the system that is responsible for maintaining the orientation of the vehicle in space, as well as for directing the high-gain antenna of the probe, which is used to send and receive signals from Earth. AACS is still working properly, as far as engineers can tell. But this returns data that does not describe exactly what the system does, according to NASA. “For example, the data may appear arbitrarily generated or may not reflect the potential state in which AACS may be,” NASA said in a press release.
Voyager 1 still looks good in all other respects. He is in communication with the engineering team and is collecting scientific data, as suggested, says NASA. And the AACS problem has not prompted the spacecraft to go into safe mode, a type of operational procedure in which the spacecraft turns off most of its instruments and focuses only on its most important functions to stay alive.
So basically the team keeps going as it tries to figure out what’s going on in the meantime. “Such a mystery is something normal for the course at this stage of the Voyager mission,” said Susanne Dodd, Voyager 1 and 2 Project Manager 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. ”
The fix may come in the form of a software fix. Or the Voyager 1 team can just learn to handle it. Adaptation is a way of life for Voyager teams. The power of both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 decreases over time as the nuclear batteries that support the spacecraft slowly disintegrate. The teams already had to shut down various spacecraft systems – but somehow the scientific tools are still working, even after so long.
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