The Voyager 1 space probe suddenly started sending NASA nonsense
Launched in 1977, Voyager became the farthest man-made object in space, but for some time now it has been sending gibberish to Earth, writes Gizmodo. NASA believes that the data obtained does not fit in with the true position of the ship.
Voyager 1 is located at a distance of over 23 billion kilometers from Earth and continues to move away from the Solar System at a speed of about 61 thousand kilometers per hour. NASA engineers have been working on the project for 44 years, but recently they began to receive some nonsense from the spacecraft instead of data.
"We can say that tasks of this kind are practically the norm at this stage of the mission," explained Suzanne Dodd, project manager of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, in a NASA press release.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 has been in interstellar space for almost 10 years. The mere fact that the ship continues to send telemetry data to Earth is impressive, although recently the information has ceased to be reliable: NASA believes that it does not fit in with the true position of the ship in any way.
The Voyager team is carefully studying the data from the spatial orientation and control system, but has not yet found out where the snag is — here or in other nodes of the ship.
"Both ships are almost 45 years old, which is much more than what they are designed for. In addition, we are in interstellar space — this is an environment with a high level of radiation, where no spacecraft has ever reached before," Dodd added. — The engineering team faces big challenges. But I am sure that if the problem in the system is solved, then we will cope."
Just because Voyager is outdated doesn't mean it's useless. So, recently he discovered a previously unknown phenomenon of the interstellar medium and cosmic plasma fluctuations. So the space old man can be compared with the American football player Tom Brady, who won the Super Bowl at the age of 43.
It is quite possible that it will not be possible to "cure" space nonsense, and NASA engineers will simply learn to live with it. After all, the problem does not affect any of Voyager 1's scientific instruments directly - after 44 years, they are all in good condition, and the team expects that both ships will continue working after 2025.
