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Science
Related: About this forumNASA's Voyager 1 resumes sending engineering updates to Earth
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-nasa-voyager-resumes-earth.htmlWhat 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 memoryincluding some of the FDS computer's software codeisn'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.
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 memoryincluding some of the FDS computer's software codeisn'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
Deuxcents
(19,401 posts)1. "We can do anything if we do it together"..isn't that what President Biden says ?!
This is amazing..🤩
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)2. Absolutely incredible!!! And all of these years!!!
JoseBalow
(4,884 posts)3. How many times has Voyager come back from the dead?
I'd never bet against it
MuseRider
(34,334 posts)4. Lots of things
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.
AuntyGravity
(289 posts)5. Thank you for saying what I couldn't figure out
How to say
Wounded Bear
(60,512 posts)6. Nice to hear...nt