THE 47-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft reestablished contact with NASA (United States Space Agency) — but is still facing difficulties — after a technical problem caused a days-long communications blackout with the historic mission, which is billions of miles away in interstellar space.
The rover is now using a radio transmitter that hasn’t been used since 1981 to keep in touch with its team on Earth as engineers try to understand what went wrong.
As the spacecraft, launched in September 1977, ages, the team has been gradually turning off some components to save power, allowing Voyager 1 to continue sending unique scientific data from 15 billion miles away.
The probe is the most distant spacecraft from Earth, operating beyond the heliosphere — the Sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond Pluto’s orbit — where its instruments directly sample interstellar space.
This new problem is just one of several that the aging vehicle has faced in recent months, but the Voyager team continues to find creative solutions so that the legendary explorer can continue her cosmic journey into uncharted territories.
A radio failure billions of kilometers away
Occasionally, engineers send commands to Voyager 1 to turn on some of its heaters and increase the temperature of components that have suffered radiation damage over the decades, explained Bruce Waggoner, Voyager mission assurance manager.
Heat can help reverse radiation damage that impairs the performance of spacecraft components.
Messages are transmitted to Voyager from mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, via the agency’s Deep Space Network.
This system of radio antennas on Earth allows the agency to communicate with Voyager 1 and its twin probe, Voyager 2, as well as other spacecraft exploring our solar system.
The first of these then sends back engineering data to show how it is responding to commands. It takes about 23 hours for a message to travel in one direction.
However, when a command to the heater was sent on October 16, something activated the spacecraft’s autonomous fault protection system. If Voyager consumes more power than it should, the fault protection system automatically shuts down non-essential systems to conserve power.
The team discovered the most recent problem on October 18, when it was unable to detect the probe’s response signal through the Deep Space Network.
Voyager 1 has been using one of its two radio transmitters, called X-band, based on the frequency it uses, for decades. The other transmitter, known as S-band, which operates on a different frequency, has not been used since 1981, as its signal is much weaker than that of X-band.
Engineers suspect that the fault protection system reduced the transmitter’s data sending rate, which changed the nature of the signal transmitted by Voyager 1 to Deep Space Network monitors. The team was finally able to locate the probe’s response later the same day by filtering signals received by the Deep Space Network.
However, on October 19, communication with Voyager 1 apparently stopped completely.
The team believes the fault protection system was triggered twice more, which may have turned off the X-band transmitter and switched the probe to the S-band transmitter, which consumes less power, according to NASA.
Working on a solution
Although the Voyager 1 team was unsure whether the weak S-band signal would be detectable due to the probe’s distance from Earth, Deep Space Network engineers were able to locate it.
The team will not send commands to the probe to reactivate the X-band transmitter until it finds out what triggered the failsafe, which could take weeks. Engineers are being cautious because they want to assess whether there are potential risks in reactivating the device.
If the team can get the X-band transmitter working again, it could transmit data that might reveal what happened, Wagoner said.
Meanwhile, engineers sent a message to Voyager 1 on October 22 to verify that the S-band transmitter was working and received confirmation on October 24. But that’s not a solution the team wants to rely on for long.
“The S-band signal is too weak to be used long-term,” Wagoner said. “So far, the team has been unable to use it to obtain telemetry (information about the state and health of the probe), let alone scientific data. But it allows us to at least send commands and make sure the probe is still pointed at Earth.”
This transmitter swap is just one of several creative solutions NASA has used to overcome communications challenges with this long-time mission this year, including activating old thrusters to keep Voyager 1’s antenna pointed at Earth and a solution to a computer problem that silenced the probe’s transmission of scientific data to Earth for months.
This content was originally published in Space probe uses inactive transmitter since 1981 24 billion km from Earth on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.
