Sometimes, when the washing machine has stopped working, it is more profitable to buy a new one than to look through old repair manuals for a part that may not even have spare parts anymore. It’s easy with technology. However, when a damaged car is the first object of human creation that managed to move beyond the influence of the sun, things are changing. It’s worth the effort to fix. This is exactly what is happening with Voyager 1whose problems started in May last year.
Then it became known that telemetry data that he was sending to Earth made no sense as they didn’t match his whereabouts. The scientists behind the project have decided that the ship can continue to operate despite this inconvenience, as it does not affect the rest of the information it sends us. However, the fact that he could continue to work does not mean that the malfunction was forgotten. Since then they have been trying to fix it, and as he explained business insider mission manager at NASA, Suzanne DoddIt is not simple.
In fact, the main problem is the age of Voyager 1. Many records of his work have been lost during these years. 45 years. This is actually logical, no one thought they would last that long, so they didn’t bother to store them properly. Today everything is digitized, but then it was about boxes of reports scientists kept in their garages after they retired. Getting them all seems very difficult, so what they have should be enough. Without a doubt, they have a difficult task ahead of them.
Searching for the failure of Voyager 1
Both Voyager 1 and its sister ship Voyager 2. launched into space in 1977. His goal was to carefully study the outermost planets of the solar system, from Jupiter to Neptune.
Initially, the task is designed for five years. However, after those first five years, it was evident that they could give much more of themselves. Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft capable of studying Uranus and Neptune, and Voyager 1 was the first to be outside the Sun’s influence, surpassing what is known as heliopause. It was not the time to fire them, so their mission continued to lengthen. In the case of Voyager 1, it is expected to be able to continue working until 2025. But this new setback put a difficult stop along the way.
Telemetry data, according to Dodd, on business insiderare a sign system health. However, the ones that are sent don’t seem to fit the situation, so they hint that something is wrong. What’s the matter? It is not at all easy to answer this question.
Digging through old manuals
Dodd’s team had to resort to endless boxes of paper files. made in the 1970s. The problem is, it’s like you only have a few pieces of a huge puzzle and you have to fill in the gaps just intuitively.
Many archives created at one time were lost, as the first scientists of the project retired. Perhaps some of them can be recovered, but others may be lost forever.
The best way to figure out the source of the problem with Voyager 1 is to perform a system reset, but they don’t know how. For this reason, they can only shuffle some hypotheses. Firstly, there may simply be aged parts. Recall that the mission was originally supposed to last 5 years, but it has already lasted 45. In addition, it could suffer from exposure to high-energy charged particles in interstellar space. It’s an unlikely encounter, but not impossible. And, if that were the case, the consequences could be similar to those already being experienced.
But there is no certainty about this. It will be necessary to continue to use new tools and scientific knowledge, while continuing to dig into the documents of the past. Thus, it is possible that a problem will be found in order to keep Voyager 1 at full power until 2025, as planned. And, who knows, maybe even much later.
Source: Hiper Textual
