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Scientists Revive Voyager 1 With Computer Fix From 15 Billion Miles Away

April 26, 2024

The Juice
How Far Away Is Voyager 1?

Restoring power to a video game console that just won’t turn on can seem like a monumental problem. Imagine fixing a computer glitch on a space probe that’s 15 billion miles away.

NASA scientists pulled it off last week when they transmitted a successful computer fix beyond our solar system. It brought the moribund Voyager 1 probe back to life. For five months, the 46-year-old craft had been transmitting a repeating pattern of numerical gibberish back to Earth. The scientists, unfazed by declarations that the spacecraft was dead, accomplished this feat by sending Voyager what they described as a “poke.”

“Today was a great day for Voyager 1,” Voyager project scientist Linda Spilker said Saturday in a prepared statement. “We’re back in communication with the spacecraft. And we look forward to getting science data back.”

The Voyager team sent the craft multiple commands to force it to restart its computer system. In that process, team members found data that stood out from the gobbledygook that contained a readout of the complete memory of Voyager’s flight data system. They discovered a defective chip in the system. Engineers moved the software code elsewhere so that the ship’s science data could be usable again.

“We never know for sure what’s going to happen with the Voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going,” said project manager Suzanne Dodd of both Voyagers 1 and 2 in a statement. “We’ve had many anomalies, and they are getting harder. But we’ve been fortunate so far to recover from them. And the mission keeps going.”

Besides transmitting data back to Earth, the Voyagers contain recordings of sounds, images, music, and greetings that perhaps one day alien beings might find.

Reflect: What kinds of skills do you think are necessary to keep a spacecraft like Voyager flying and communicating with Earth?

Question
Based on the information in the article and the infographic, readers can conclude that _______. (Common Core RI.9-10.7)
a. Voyager 1 is being pulled back toward Earth by the Sun’s gravitational pull
b. humans have the ability to send communications beyond the limits of our solar system
c. Voyager 1 will permanently lose communication with Earth within the next year
d. NASA scientists expect Voyager 1 to one day return to Earth
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