NASA maintains contact with Voyager 1 despite the probe’s computers crashing

NASA confirmed last Thursday to EFE that it is maintaining contact with the Voyager 1 space probe despite the ship’s computers being down for several days. Emits worthless data.

Voyager’s two spacecraft chiefs, Dr. Linda Spilker, and Susan Dodd, Voyager’s interstellar mission director, indicated to EFE’s questions that the problem was with the three computers that make up the Flight Data System (FDS). “Continues” despite the work Which the engineers have been doing for several days.

But Spilker and Dodd confirmed that contact had occurred between the ship and the control center on Earth Still openDespite information in recent days indicating a loss of contact.

“The signal carrying the data is still broadcasting from the ship. Simply put It does not contain any useful data. The two people responsible for the program explained that the team is able to obtain some information from the signal that allows us to know that the ship is continuing to receive and implement orders.

The problem is blocking Voyager 1 Sending scientific information to Earth Or flying.

Restarting the Defense and Security Forces, the last attempt to solve it so far, Did not succeedScientists confirmed.

FDS’s mission is to collect Data captured by scientific instruments The probe, as well as data on the position of the ship itself, was to be sent to the control center on Earth.

NASA noted that although the restart did not resolve the failure, it did provide new information that would help Eliminate some possible causes Which may be responsible for the problem.

In this sense, the US space agency is now Study previous difficulties It is similar but not identical to what Voyager 1 struggles with in order to “learn more about the problem before we can fix it.”

“The team will spend a few more weeks collecting more information from the ship and learning more about the FDS and other ship systems Try to get to the bottom of the problem“, NASA concluded.

Voyager 1 was It was launched in September 1977 It is currently 24 billion kilometers away from Earth, so the signal from the control center needs 22.5 hours to reach the ship.

And at that distance, engineers ask 45 hours to get responses from the probe Determine the effectiveness of sent orders.

For its part, Voyager 2, the twin ship of Voyager 1 that was launched in August 1977, orbits 20.2 billion kilometers from Earth.