The spacecraft has inexplicably turned off one of its radio transmitters, likely because of an unidentified onboard issue.
Voyager 1 can’t seem to catch a break. The interstellar traveler recently recovered from a thruster glitch that nearly ended its mission, and now NASA’s aging probe stopped sending data to ground control due to an unknown issue.that Voyager 1 recently experienced a brief pause in communication after turning off one of its radio transmitters.
Voyager 1 should’ve sent back engineering data for the team to determine how the spacecraft responded to the command. This process normally takes a couple of days, as the command takes about 23 hours to travel more than 15 billion miles to the spacecraft and another 23 hours for the flight team to receive a signal back. Instead, the command seems to have triggered the spacecraft’s fault protection system, which autonomously responds to onboard issues affecting the mission.
The flight team was able to locate the signal a day later but then, on October 19, communication with Voyager 1 stopped entirely. Voyager 1’s fault protection system appeared to have been triggered twice more, and it turned off the X-band transmitter altogether. The spacecraft switched to a second radio transmitter called the S-band, which uses less power but transmits a significantly fainter signal.
Voyager 1 launched in 1977, less than a month after its twin probe, Voyager 2, began its journey to space. The spacecraft took a faster route, exiting the asteroid belt earlier than its twin and making close encounters with Jupiter and Saturn. Along the way, it discovered two Jovian moons, Thebe and Metis, as well as five new moons and a new ring called the G-ring around Saturn.
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