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erronis

(16,744 posts)
Mon Apr 22, 2024, 03:34 PM Apr 2024

NASA's Voyager 1 resumes sending engineering updates to Earth

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-nasa-voyager-resumes-earth.html

What a triumph of great engineering and perseverance.

For the first time since November, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft's three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it's sent to Earth.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory—including some of the FDS computer's software code—isn't working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide affected the code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.




Also great to see how some of us "more mature" people are still accomplishing great things!
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NASA's Voyager 1 resumes sending engineering updates to Earth (Original Post) erronis Apr 2024 OP
"We can do anything if we do it together"..isn't that what President Biden says ?! Deuxcents Apr 2024 #1
Absolutely incredible!!! And all of these years!!! RKP5637 Apr 2024 #2
How many times has Voyager come back from the dead? JoseBalow Apr 2024 #3
Lots of things MuseRider Apr 2024 #4
Thank you for saying what I couldn't figure out AuntyGravity Apr 2024 #5
Nice to hear...nt Wounded Bear Apr 2024 #6

Deuxcents

(19,401 posts)
1. "We can do anything if we do it together"..isn't that what President Biden says ?!
Mon Apr 22, 2024, 03:43 PM
Apr 2024

This is amazing..🤩

MuseRider

(34,334 posts)
4. Lots of things
Mon Apr 22, 2024, 04:18 PM
Apr 2024

make me smile but this? OMG it thrills me.

I know nothing about any of the science but the absolute success of this , well passed time they thought it would die, just makes my day and, well many days buoyed by good science and people who worked together and worked hard and have won this one.

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