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NASA’s Voyager 1, the most distant manned spacecraft, recently sent an update about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems after a nearly five-month pause.
The spacecraft resumed sending useful data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems for the first time in nine months. For the first time since November, the US space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is ready to enable spacecraft to again receive science data and resume operations.
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According to NASA reports, Voyager 1’s last message was on November 14. However, the spacecraft continued to receive commands from the space agency and continued to operate normally.
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Later, in March, it was discovered that the problem was linked to one of Voyager’s three onboard computers, called the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS). The FDS packages science and engineering data before it is transmitted to Earth.
The engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California discovered that the chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory, which also stored the software code of the FDS computer, was not functioning.
“The loss of that code rendered science and engineering data unusable,” NASA said. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory.” But no location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety, the space agency continued. “
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Next, mission controllers devised a plan to break the affected code into sections and store those sections in different locations in the FDS. On April 18, a radio signal was sent to Voyager 1. After some modifications to the code, the mission flight team successfully received a message from the spacecraft on April 20.
It is important to note that Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to fly in interstellar space.
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Published: April 23, 2024, 12:26 pm IST
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