The Voyager 1 interplanetary probe was launched in 1977 and has now arrived at interstellar area wherever it is the furthest-traveled gentleman-designed object. It’s massively exceeded its authentic mission and continues to return worthwhile scientific info, but there is an clear fault which is leaving its controllers perplexed. Onboard is an mind-set handle program which keeps the craft’s antennas pointing at Earth, and whilst it evidently nonetheless is effective (as we’re nevertheless in touch with the probe) and other devices are fantastic, it is started off returning incomprehensible facts. Evidently it’s created a routine of reporting random knowledge, or states the antenna can not potentially be in.
That a 45 12 months aged laptop or computer is even now functioning at all is testament to the abilities of its designers, and at 14.5 billion miles away a fix is difficult even so considerably we’d be fascinated to know about the failure modes of previous electronics in room. It is postulated that they may possibly only live with the fault if the process is continue to performing, problem a computer software resolve, or locate some way to use just one of the craft’s redundant methods to avoid the trouble. In the meantime we can rest quickly in our beds, mainly because we’re even now a couple of centuries absent from its return as a giant alien sentient equipment.
We have featured the Voyager application a handful of times in advance of below at Hackaday, not minimum when we took a shut appear at one of its instruments.
Many thanks [Jon Woodcock] for the suggestion.
