Earth's management is very concerned about the 46-year-old Voyager-1 probe, because the most distant man-made device has not sent data for months, and engineers working on the program have not been able to find a solution to the problem since. If this remains the case, this means that the scientific phase of the legendary probe’s work is over, and it will only collect kilometers as a kind of beacon.
He no longer speaks to us coherently
Susan Dodd, who has led Voyager since 2010, told NPR.
The veteran device appears to respond to commands sent to it, such as restarting itself, but the signals it sends are now a series of ones and zeros instead of binary code.
Since 2012, Voyager-1 has been traveling through interstellar space, and it's not all darkness and emptiness. Gas, dust, and cosmic radiation are also found in space, and since we haven't had many opportunities to measure them yet, their scientific value is invaluable. However, no such data has been received since last November.
Pity pity
Voyager-1 was on the brink of destruction several times during its nearly half-century career. We had to deal with a bug blocking the nozzles that turn the device towards the ground antennas, and software problems, while the systems and instruments on board were shut down one after another.
This time, the part of the on-board computer, which handles data packets, stopped working – in our case, of course, a device at the technical level of the mid-70s.
The button you use to open your car door has more computing power than Voyager's sensors
Susan Dodd pointed out.
However, there is a more dramatic problem: the original Voyager mission was planned for five years, which ended up lasting five decades. The tentacles are simple
They outlived those who built them.
The challenge facing ground control is unique and cumulatively difficult, as they attempt to penetrate the 24 billion km long structure by hiding the yellow plates.
We'll keep trying, but it won't be fast
Dodd stated.
“50 years or nothing” has been my motto for a while, and we are now getting very close to that
– said Stamatios Kremigis, who was able to see Voyager 1 with his own eyes in the summer of 1977 at the Cape Canaveral Space Center in Florida. The low-energy particle measuring instrument, for which he was responsible, has been working ever since, and the specialist himself was very surprised that it had lasted so long.
Plans can last longer and people can live longer, but there are physical barriers that cannot be jumped. Voyager's probes are powered by radioisotope generators filled with plutonium spheres that have a half-life of 87.7 years. In 2022, it had 70% of the original fuel, but by about 2030 — if the technology lasts until then — it won't provide enough energy to power the onboard systems.
According to Krimigis, from then on, the probe will be nothing more than space junk. Because it encounters no stars or planets during its journey, it can travel for billions of years, so it can survive not only its builders, but humanity itself, with animal sounds, laughter and greetings in 55 languages on board.
(Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NPR)
(Cover Photo: A contemporary illustration of the Voyager spacecraft passing by Saturn in the summer of 1979. Image: NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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