NASA's engineering team investigates a mystery taking place on the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
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Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in existence, having been launched 44 years ago. It is currently at the edge of the solar system, flying through the "interstellar medium" beyond the Sun's influence.
However, scientists found that the craft is receiving and executing commands from Earth successfully – but the readings from the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS) do not reflect what is actually happening on Voyager 1.
The system maintains the spacecraft's orientation, keeping its antenna pointed directly at Earth so that data can be sent from it to Nasa. While all indications suggest that AACS is operating normally, the telemetry data it returns appears to be randomly generated – failing to reflect any possible state the system could be in .
Furthermore, the issue did not trigger any fault protection systems that could put Voyager into safe operation, and the signal has not faded – suggesting that the antenna is still in its normal position, pointed toward Earth.
NASA says it will continue to monitor the situation, as it's possible the invalid data is being generated by another system, but says it doesn't understand why this is happening or how long this issue might continue. It takes about two days for a message from Earth to reach Voyager and receive a response from the spacecraft.
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"We're looking to solve this mystery," said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager 1 and 2 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Both spacecraft were launched in 1977 and are the only ones collecting data about interstellar space.
“Both spacecraft (Voyager 1 and 2) are almost 45 years old, which is well beyond what the mission. We are also in interstellar space – a high-radiation environment that no spacecraft in before. So there are some big challenges for the engineering team. But I think if there is a way to solve this problem with AACS, our team will find it,” Suzanne Dodd continued.
There's a chance that Nasa won't find the source of the problem and instead will have to issue software changes or use one of the spacecraft's backup systems.
Source of information: independent.co.uk
