(ORDO NEWS) — NASA engineers have identified the causes of a mysterious malfunction, as a result of which the Voyager 1 probe began to send strange signals, and eliminated it.
It turned out that the Attitude, Positioning and Probe Control System (AACS), which controls the position of the main antenna, began to send data through a faulty on-board computer. This was reported in a press release on Phys.org.
In May 2022, NASA began receiving garbled telemetry related to the AACS system from Voyager 1, while the rest of the probe, including scientific instruments, was working normally.
AACS also appeared to be operational, as the signal from it hadn’t weakened, but the data seemed completely random.
The team of specialists decided to try to transfer the AACS data to another computer, which made it possible to eliminate the failure.
Although engineers don’t know exactly why the attitude control system began sending telemetry data to the wrong computer, they attribute this to the fact that AACS received an erroneous command generated by another onboard computer.
If this is the case, then this means that another problem has occurred on the probe that has yet to be found. However, according to experts, it does not pose a threat to Voyager 1 in the long term.
At this stage of the mission, such incidents are kind of the norm, as Voyager 1 is over 45 years old and far beyond its intended lifespan. In addition, the device is located in interstellar space – an environment with a high level of radiation.
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