Space.com - Voyager 1 Rides 'Tsunami Wave' in Interstellar Space
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft — the only object made by humans to reach interstellar space — might still be caught what scientists have described as a cosmic "tsunami wave," a shock wave that first hit the probe in February, according to new research. You can hear the eerie interstellar vibrations in a video, courtesy of NASA.
"Most people would have thought the interstellar medium would have been smooth and quiet," study researcher Don Gurnett, professor of physics at the University of Iowa, and the principal investigator of Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument, said in a statement from NASA. "But these shock waves seem to be more common than we thought."
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Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission's loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA's longest-lived spacecraft.
The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1's ability to send back telemetry data, such as measurements from the spacecraft's science instruments or basic engineering information about how the probe was doing. [...] "It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven't given up," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. "There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I've been project manager."
Dodd became the project manager for NASA's Voyager mission in 2010, overseeing a small cadre of engineers responsible for humanity's exploration into interstellar space. Voyager 1 is the most distant spacecraft ever, speeding away from the Sun at 38,000 mph (17 kilometers per second). [...] The latest problem with Voyager 1 lies in the probe's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft working alongside a command-and-control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing. [...] In November, the data packages transmitted by Voyager 1 manifested a repeating pattern of ones and zeros as if it were stuck, according to NASA. Dodd said engineers at JPL have spent the better part of three months trying to diagnose the cause of the problem. She said the engineering team is "99.9 percent sure" the problem originated in the FDS, which appears to be having trouble "frame syncing" data. [...] "It's likely somewhere in the FDS memory," Dodd said. "A bit got flipped or corrupted. But without the telemetry, we can't see where that FDS memory corruption is."
[...] "We have sheets and sheets of schematics that are paper, that are all yellowed on the corners, and all signed in 1974," Dodd said. "They're pinned up on the walls and people are looking at them. That's a whole story in itself, just how to get to the information you need to be able to talk about the commanding decisions or what the problem might be." [...] "It is difficult to command Voyager," Dodd said. "We don't have any type of simulator for this. We don't have any hardware simulator. We don't have any software simulator... There's no simulator with the FDS, no hardware where we can try it on the ground first before we send it. So that makes people more cautious, and it's a balance between getting commanding right and taking risks."
[...] The spacecraft's vast distance and position in the southern sky require NASA to use the largest 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at a Deep Space Network tracking site in Australia, one of the network's most in-demand antennas.
"The data rates are very low, and this anomaly causes us not to have any telemetry," Dodd said. "We're kind of shooting in the blind a little bit because we don't know what the status of the spacecraft is completely."
Previously on SoylentNews:
Engineers Work to Fix Voyager 1 Computer - 20231215
(Score: 3, Funny) by toygeek on Thursday December 18 2014, @06:17AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bKG0p6Tv9Q [youtube.com]
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 18 2014, @06:31AM
Your link points to a music video "The Ventures - Wipeout live "....
* snort *
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 18 2014, @01:18PM
Who would have thought that NASA would launch an outer space robot surfer?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2, Informative) by odgn on Thursday December 18 2014, @07:11AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR51v0SR5Dc [youtube.com]
(Score: 3) by halcyon1234 on Thursday December 18 2014, @02:04PM
To play a fucking video. WTF?
Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday December 18 2014, @06:38AM
Maybe this will account for what appears to be the missing mass that holds the universe together?
But then, if space is not empty, why do we see the stars as sharp as we do? Wouldn't particles in the void obscure the images we see?
Yet we see stars through billions of light years of void.
Maybe this stuff was another planet which could have formed had it been closer to the sun and made denser through the sun's gravitational field?
Interesting observations, NASA. Now, I guess its up to us to figure out what it means.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday December 18 2014, @07:42AM
When you go to the link and read the stories you find out there is no actual "vibrations" as the story suggests, it just a tiny difference in plasma density in the region where the influence of the Sun’s bubble of charged particles ends and interstellar space is said to begin. Its a purely arbitrary region where the charged particles from the galaxy meet the suns charged particles.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday December 18 2014, @08:43AM
Now, I guess its up to us to figure out what it means.
Is it? I thought I'd leave it to the astrophysicists, but if you insist, I'll get some pens.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Funny) by rts008 on Thursday December 18 2014, @02:05PM
I've dug out my abacus, since I seem to have misplaced my slide rule.(any tricky stuff, and I will have to take off shoes and socks for more digits)
IIRC, the last time 'what it means' was left to 'us', things got FUBAR'd so bad, it's still not right.
Mass insanity prevaled:
Sun gods, moon gods, earth being a platform on pillars(and/or turtles),skydomes,etc.
On a more serious note:
I also vote that we let the astrophysicists keep going with it...they have an impressive track record over the last few centuries, IMO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 18 2014, @03:40PM
The likely explanation is: "Gort! GORT! stop playing with the tractor beam, don't you see you're affecting those Earth monkeys' probe? Then they get upset and litter even more!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 18 2014, @03:59PM
The first few seconds of the video have a caption indicating these plasmas originated as solar mass ejections - solar flares from our sun.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday December 18 2014, @09:14AM
From the video:
So this is what Star Trek's ion storms are all about!
(Score: 2) by elf on Thursday December 18 2014, @11:55AM
"This is Captain Picard, we are about to go through some turbulence so please sit back down and fasten your seatbelts"
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 18 2014, @01:56PM
That's a fake quote and you know it.
Seatbelts, pah. No need for Seatbelts when you have an inertial dampening system.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 18 2014, @05:35PM
Then how come you always had at least one Red Shirt go flying over the handrail on the bridge?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday December 18 2014, @05:48PM
So why is it you have bridge personnel flying all over the place when a ship takes a hit? It sure seems like Starfleet could save themselves a lot of injuries by adding seatbelts and air bags.
(Also highly recommended: Some sort of fuse system to keep consoles from exploding, and sending down ground combat specialists to planets before sending your bridge officers.)
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday December 19 2014, @03:15AM
Starfleet's thinking is their ships won't have issues with power surges, enemy fire, ion storms, holodeck malfunctions, thus this equipment is simply not needed.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Thursday December 18 2014, @09:29PM
This is Captain Kirk. We're about to go through some turbulence. Don't even think about seat belts because you don't have them. Fly around the bridge like rag dolls, try not to hit too many buttons, and get knocked unconscious. When you wake up, something strange will have happened. Kirk, out.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 18 2014, @01:23PM
Ion Storm [wikipedia.org] never released any Star Trek games!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday December 18 2014, @12:25PM
If everybody had an space probe
Across that outer space
Then everybody'd be surfin'
Like Californi-a
You'd seem 'em watching those cameras
And telemetry too
An act of real derring-do
Surfin' outer space!
You'd catch 'em surfin' around comets,
past that heliopause line,
Near the Kuiper belt systems,
Pluto, Sedna, Eris, fine.
All going 17 k-m-s
And out to far nebulae.
Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' outer space!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.