This week, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory officials said that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is sending back some weird information from the interstellar area that’s vacating NASA engineers rubbing their heads.
Readouts on the disclosure of the 1970s-era space probe directly appear to be aimlessly developed or don’t indicate any feasible scenario where the spacecraft could exist in.
The complicated data appear from the so-called “attitude articulation and control system,” or AACS, the onboard appliance that estimates, reports, and changes the vehicle’s stance in space. The system keeps an antenna pointed at Earth, enabling it to send data home.
Voyagers 1 and 2 are nearly 45 years old, which is far beyond their actual life longing. Interstellar space is a high-radiation setting that no spacecraft has ever drifted in before, so shocks are almost foreseen to arise.
Voyager 1 is 14.5 billion miles away from Earth, and this means light takes about 20 hours and 33 minutes to hike that distance. In other words, the lag ween getting the news to Voyager and receiving a response in approximately two days.
“There are some big challenges for the engineering team,” Dodd said. “But I think if there’s a way to solve this issue with our team and we will find it.”
The spacecraft provides about four fewer watts of power yearly, restricting the number of systems they can regulate. The mission squad has turned off appliances to stock power, and no science tools have been powered down yet. According to NASA, the objective is to keep the Voyagers running beyond 2025.
