Voyager 1 stopped delirious and despatched scientific knowledge for the primary time in six months

The data was transmitted by two scientific devices – a magnetometer and a plasma sensor. For the primary probe exterior the heliosphere in human historical past, that is invaluable data. Quickly, the mission group guarantees to launch two extra devices on board the system.

At the moment, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the furthest reconnaissance missions of Earth’s civilization. Each of them will likely be 47 years previous on the finish of this 12 months. These are two of NASA’s oldest working spacecraft. It’s even stunning that they nonetheless proceed to gather scientific knowledge and, in precept, stay operational.

A significant failure within the Voyager 1 pc system occurred in November 2023. As a substitute of telemetry and scientific knowledge, the probe started transmitting a meaningless set of knowledge to the bottom. In April 2024, the mission group was in a position to perceive the reason for the malfunction – a small phase (chip) within the RAM of one of many probe’s three computer systems had failed. The specialists managed to bypass the defective sector and for the primary time acquired readable data from the probe.

Then it was a matter of method. A request to obtain knowledge from two scientific devices was despatched on Could 17 and two days later the reply got here – full data on the observations (the sign traveled a method for 22.5 hours). Two extra devices – a cosmic ray sensor and a low-energy charged particle sensor – are being calibrated and will likely be operational over the subsequent weeks or months. Six different devices on board the probe are both offline or have beforehand failed. However even the remaining ones will likely be sufficient for a lot of new scientific works.