How The Voyager Spacecraft Are Nonetheless Working After Extra Than 40 Years

As you’d count on from decades-old expertise, the Voyager spacecraft have skilled their share of bugs. Not too long ago, Voyager 1 skilled an odd glitch with its perspective management system, which is liable for orienting the spacecraft appropriately. The management system was sending again garbled information, however the spacecraft was nonetheless pointed because it was purported to be.

Engineers discovered that the issue had occurred when the system began utilizing an outdated pc as an alternative of the present pc it was purported to be utilizing. They had been in a position to repair the issue by switching to the newer pc, however they did not discover out why the error had occurred within the first place.

“A thriller like that is form of par for the course at this stage of the Voyager mission,” stated Suzanne Dodd of JPL, challenge supervisor for Voyager 1 and a couple of, stating that the mission was operating far longer than the unique designers had ever meant.

A glitch hit Voyager 2 as effectively when an influence provide concern meant {that a} safety routine was inadvertently toggled on when it did not have to be in 2020. That was regarding as a result of it meant that the spacecraft was utilizing energy unnecessarily, and the spacecraft was positioned right into a mode with its devices powered off. Luckily, engineers had been in a position to repair that inside just a few weeks to get the routine turned off and the spacecraft’s devices turned again on.