After months of tireless efforts, engineers have successfully restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft. The team of scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently received a new signal from the spacecraft, located over 15 billion miles away from Earth.
The issues with Voyager 1 began in November when the spacecraft stopped transmitting data, with the telemetry being unreadable. Suspecting a problem in the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) memory, the ground team sent a command to recode part of the memory to address the issue.
It took nearly two days for engineers to uplink the command and receive a response from Voyager 1 due to the vast distance. After pinpointing the issue to a single chip in the FDS memory, engineers worked to relocate the code into different parts of the memory bank and modify it to ensure it all functions properly.
Upon receiving a signal from Voyager 1, the team was thrilled to see communication restored after a five-month hiatus. The successful restoration of the spacecraft’s computer is a significant achievement and a testament to the dedication and expertise of the NASA team.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft has been in operation for over four decades, making groundbreaking discoveries about our solar system and interstellar space. With the computer now back online, Voyager 1 can continue its mission of exploring the unknown reaches of space.
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