NASA used an old transmitter not used since 1981 to successfully communicate with the Voyager 1 spacecraft flying outside the solar system.
Simulation of Voyager 1 flying in outer space. Image: NASA
NASA lost contact with the Voyager 1 interstellar spacecraft for nearly a week after a technical problem caused the main transmitter on the probe to stop working. Using Voyager 1’s weaker backup transmitter, engineers are assessing the problem from a distance of 24 billion kilometers, according to Live Science.
Scientists lost contact with Voyager 1 from October 19 to October 24. A team of NASA engineers established contact with a backup transmitter that had not been in use since 1981. According to authorities at NASA, the main transmitter’s outage may have been triggered by an automatic, error-proof system. Responding to problems on board ships. Once communications are restored, it may take NASA days or weeks to determine the problem behind the incident.
Communication with Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, was not simple. Voyager 1, currently 24 billion kilometers from Earth, is the furthest man-made object from Earth in the universe. The command from Earth took 23 hours to reach the spacecraft at the edge of the solar system, and the response from Voyager 1 took another 23 hours to transmit back to Earth.
According to NASA, communications began to be interrupted on October 16 after engineers sent Voyager 1 a command to turn on the heater. Instead of processing this command, Voyager 1’s error prevention system was activated. Two days later, when NASA engineers searched for a response from Voyager 1 using the Deep Space Network, the worldwide network of radio antennas used to support interplanetary missions, they could not detect a signal. of the ship. It wasn’t until the end of the day that the group found Voyager 1’s signal. However, the next day (October 19), communication with the spacecraft seemed to stop completely, according to NASA.
Engineers believe that during this time, Voyager 1’s anti-error system activated two more times. This forces the spacecraft to turn off its primary X-band radio transmitter and switch to its backup S-band transmitter, which uses a different and much weaker frequency. Although S-band uses less power, Voyager 1 has not used it to communicate with Earth since 1981.
On October 22, the engineering team sent a command to confirm that the spacecraft was using a backup S-band transmitter. They successfully re-established contact with Voyager 1 two days later (October 24). ). Currently, they are working hard to understand the problem of activating Voyager 1’s anti-error system to return the ship to normal operating mode.
Voyager 1 and 2 launched in 1977. The duo are the only two spacecraft to fly through the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles that surrounds the solar system. As the spacecraft gets older and moves farther and farther from Earth, technical problems become more common.