Mysterious data from outside our solar system sent by the “Voyager 1” spacecraft, baffled engineers!
45 years after its launch, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is still continuing its journey outside our solar system, but now, the veteran spacecraft is sending out strange data, baffling its engineers.
NASA said Wednesday that while the probe is still operating properly, readings from the AACS Expression and Attitude Control System do not appear to match the spacecraft's movements and direction, indicating that the spacecraft is confused about its position in space.
The AACS system is necessary for the spacecraft to transmit NASA data about its surrounding interstellar environment as it keeps the craft's antenna pointing toward our planet.
"The spacecraft is approximately 45 years old, far exceeding what mission planners expected," Susan Dodd, Voyager 1 and 2 project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.
While NASA said that the twin of Voyager 1, the Voyager 2 probe, is behaving normally.
Voyager 1, launched in 1977, to explore the outer planets in our solar system, has long been operating on predictions and continues to send information about its flights back to Earth.
In 2012 the lead spacecraft left our solar system and entered interstellar space. It's now 14.5 billion miles from Earth, making it the furthest man-made object.
From what its engineers can tell, NASA said, Voyager 1's AACS is sending out randomly generated data that doesn't reflect what's actually happening on board.
But even if the system data indicates otherwise, the spacecraft's antenna appears to be aligned correctly — it receives and executes commands from NASA and sends the data back to Earth. So far, she said, the system problem hasn't pushed the old spacecraft into safe mode, during which it only performs basic operations.
"Until the nature of the problem is better understood, the team cannot predict whether this might affect how long the spacecraft can collect and transmit scientific data," NASA said.
Dodd and her team hope to find out what's causing a bot messenger from Earth to send unwanted data. "There are some big challenges for the engineering team," Dodd said.
She added: The main challenge is that light takes 20 hours and 33 minutes to reach Voyager's current interstellar position, so the round trip message between the space agency and Voyager takes two days.
"But I think if there is a way to solve this problem with AACS, our team will find it," Dodd added.
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