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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
For more than 45 years, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been cruising through the cosmos, crossing the boundary of our solar system to become the first human-made object to venture to interstellar space. Iconic in every regard, Voyager 1 has delivered groundbreaking data on Jupiter and Saturn, and captured the loneliest image of Earth. But perhaps nothing is lonelier than an aging spacecraft that has lost its ability to communicate while traveling billions of miles away from home.
NASA’s Voyager 1 has been glitching for months, sending nonsensical data to ground control. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been trying to resolve the issue, but given how far the spacecraft currently is, the process has been extremely slow. Things are looking pretty bleak for the aging mission, which might be nearing the end. Still, NASA isn’t ready to let go of its most distant spacecraft just yet.
“The team continues information gathering and are preparing some steps that they’re hopeful will get them on a path to either understand the root of the problem and/or solve it,” a JPL spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email.
The anomaly may have something to do with the spacecraft’s flight data system (FDS). FDS collects data from Voyager’s science instruments, as well as engineering data about the health of the spacecraft and combines them into a single package that’s transmitted to Earth through one of the probe’s subsystems, the telemetry modulation unit (TMU), in binary code.
FDS and TMU, however, may be having trouble communicating with one another. As a result, TMU has been sending data to mission control in a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes.
Related:
Humanity's Most Distant Space Probe Jeopardized by Computer Glitch
Engineers Work to Fix Voyager 1 Computer
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2024, @06:49AM (7 children)
Last time he was digging oil wells.
N/T
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Wednesday March 13 2024, @07:46AM (5 children)
Someday it will be on display, either in a museum, or in someone's office.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2024, @08:01AM
Isn't Bruce Willis too large to fit in a display case ??
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Wednesday March 13 2024, @08:06AM (3 children)
Or in the bottom drawer of a locked filing cabinet in a basement of a council planning office on Alpha Centauri guarded by a leopard.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2024, @01:47PM (2 children)
Leopard: are they the spotted, or striped ones? Asking for a friend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2024, @02:47PM (1 child)
If you have ask for a friend, he wasn't looking for a leopard, but for a cougar, which is neither spotted nor striped (although these may sometimes appear in spotted leopard attire).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14 2024, @04:36AM
A cougar, I knew it! Sugarmomma. He's just the type. Pretty-boy, thinks he deserves a lavish lifestyle just because he's so hot.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 13 2024, @11:32AM
That's who handled V'Ger properly during Star Trek: The (slow-)Motion Picture.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 13 2024, @11:55AM (1 child)
Is there anything new in the last 3 or 4 months or is it the same story?
It's a pity the hardware/software is closed source, there are probably plenty of armchair types who would enjoy speculating.
(Score: 2) by ls671 on Wednesday March 13 2024, @05:23PM
I believe it's new and they managed to fix it last time. OTOH I wonder how much data, say, how many bytes they can send at once before waiting for a reply:
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 3, Informative) by istartedi on Wednesday March 13 2024, @05:19PM (1 child)
Memory banks unloading
Bytes break into bits
Unit one's in trouble [youtube.com] and it's scared out of its wits
Guidance systems break down
A struggle to exist, to resist
A pulse of dying power in a clenching plastic fist
1-0-0-1-0-0-1
S.O.S.
1-0-0-1-0-0-1
In distress
1-0-0-1-0-0
It replays each of the days
A hundred years of routines
Bows its head and prays to the mother of all machines
All machines
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1) by Wakaranai on Thursday March 14 2024, @09:07AM
Please. No Rush to judgement....