After eight months, all is well, again!
NASA announced Friday that its Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is over 15 billion miles away from Earth, is again fully operational following technical issues that arose in November 2023.
The agency said it partially resolved an issue in April, but it wasn’t until recently that it was able to receive data from all four instruments aboard the probe.
The four instruments study plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles in interstellar space.
Full article, HERE from Fox.
JPL Pasadena had been troubleshooting since November, and finally ‘kicked’ the right part to get it out of the loop it was in!
Voyager is coming up on 50 years since the launch, and is well out into deep space, well beyond its original tasking for fly bys of Jupiter and her moons.
Amazing that both V1 and V2 are still operating! That is a tribute to the ‘old school’ engineers and scientists that built and programmed them. Kudos to all!!!
Just to be OCD, the four still active instruments are functioning now. There were originally eleven but most have been shut down or failed.
Woohoo!
Surly- You are correct, but still an amazing package to survive this long!
SLee- Yes!!!
Of course, we have to take NASA’s word for it since there is no way to check on it independently. And it’s not like their jobs depend on it so I am sure they are totally trustworthy. Imagine what sort of job it is to monitor package that was launched 50 years ago. They are on their third set of engineers after the first two sets grew old and retired. Some in in the morning, make some coffee, check to see if the red blinking light is still blinking, and go to the gym.
NASA. For all their successes the top heavy bureaucracy slows them down. Let us remember our first satellites weren’t the Vanguard NASA ones. The country needed a success. The US Army modified existing military rockets and launched a satellite.
Fast forward today and contrast Space X with the NASA’s Boeing Starliner.
NASA devices/machines are like Volvos.
They either fail almost immediately*, or last beyond all reason.
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* Or “immediately” AFTER warranty…
Obligatory music to go along with the post’s title:
https://is.gd/rUVHd6
Having been in the business since the 70s (DOD mostly but including a stint with NASA), the degradation in capability – mostly but not entirely management – is a shame. The increase in bureaucracy is also a factor. Once upon a time – 80s, deep analysis was used to verify computer output. Now, the computer is always right; contrary analysis is wrong. Sigh …
(used to watch your P3s come in to Moffett in the 80s – we shared a fence on the runway)
Well, after 50 years the RTGs powering the probe are down to 65% of the initial output and it keeps getting farther and farther away. Eventually either there won’t be enough power for the transmitter at all even if the instruments keep working. And that assumes the Deep Space Network dishes are maintained.
I hope there are plans on the books to launch new large dishes for a new Deep Space Network in orbit once Starship can get 100 tons up in a single launch. We need better ears to listen to the probes that are out there.