{"id":129845,"date":"2024-11-25T08:44:21","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T01:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=129845"},"modified":"2024-11-25T08:44:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T01:44:21","slug":"voyager-1-just-activated-a-radio-thats-been-offline-since-1981-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=129845","title":{"rendered":"Voyager 1 Just Activated a Radio That&#8217;s Been Offline Since 1981 : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Last month, NASA briefly lost Voyager 1 in the expanse of interstellar space, and when the craft reappeared it was communicating with a transmitter it hasn&#8217;t used in more than 40 years. NASA is now troubleshooting the issue.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>The trouble began on October 16, when NASA beamed a command to Voyager 1 to turn on one of its heaters. An innocent enough request, but the spacecraft responded by ghosting Earth.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>It actually took the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nasa.gov\/voyager\/2024\/10\/28\/after-pause-nasas-voyager-1-communicating-with-mission-team\/\">agency<\/a> two full days to notice the issue. That&#8217;s because Voyager 1 is the <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/voyager\/voyager-1\/\">most distant human-made object<\/a>, and being almost 25 billion kilometers (15.3 billion miles) away, it takes nearly 23 hours for a message to get there \u2013 even at the speed of light \u2013 and another 23 hours for a response.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>On October 18, Voyager 1 missed its scheduled return call. NASA&#8217;s Deep Space Network (DSN) scanned for the signal and eventually found it on a slightly different frequency band.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>It seems that the heater triggered Voyager 1&#8217;s built-in fault protection system. If an instrument tries to draw too much power, this mechanism will automatically shut off other, non-essential systems to conserve energy.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>In this case, the casualty was its X-band radio transmitter, the spacecraft&#8217;s main line of communication with Earth. To save power, the fault protection system had reduced the rate of data transmission, and changed the X-band signal.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>DSN reestablished the connection, and things seemed stable while the flight team began investigating the issue. But the next day, comms cut out completely.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nasa.gov\/voyager\/2024\/10\/28\/after-pause-nasas-voyager-1-communicating-with-mission-team\/\">NASA&#8217;s suspicion<\/a> is that the X-band transmitter had set off the fault protection system twice more, which would have caused the craft to turn it off completely. In its place, Voyager 1 would have switched to the S-band transmitter, which uses less power.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, it&#8217;s also far fainter, and the crew feared that it could no longer be detected from this far away. After all, Voyager 1 hasn&#8217;t used the S-band transmitter to talk to Earth since 1981, when it was obviously much, much closer to us.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, DSN engineers were able to reconnect with this instrument, sending a command on October 22 that confirmed it&#8217;s still working. The team doesn&#8217;t want to turn the X-band transmitter back on before they can figure out what the problem is, but troubleshooting is ongoing. Hopefully, Voyager 1 will be returned to normal operations soon.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>The most impressive part of the story is that it&#8217;s still possible to run these kinds of diagnostics from across the width of the solar system, on tech that&#8217;s almost 50 years old. Although, as they age, the Voyager probes are having more and more technical troubles.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>In 2022, a glitch caused Voyager 1 to send back <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/super-long-distance-nasa-fix-restores-voyager-1-roughly-15-billion-miles-away\">garbled telemetry data<\/a> for a few months. And between November 2023 and June 2024, the probe sent back <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/voyager-1-is-back-legendary-probe-makes-contact-from-interstellar-space\">nothing but nonsense<\/a>, which was eventually traced to a corrupted chip in its memory system.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s important to keep the two probes in working order, as they move through a region of space that no other human-made objects have yet experienced \u2013 interstellar space. There, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/strange-ripples-have-been-detected-at-the-edge-of-the-solar-system\">beyond the Sun&#8217;s influence<\/a>, the Voyager twins have made some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/voyager-1-is-continuing-to-detect-a-hum-of-plasma-waves-in-the-void-of-interstellar-space\">intriguing discoveries<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>Sadly, we might not have too much time left. Due to a dwindling power supply, it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/voyager\/frequently-asked-questions\/\">expected<\/a> that they&#8217;ll stop collecting science data after 2025. By 2036, they&#8217;ll be out of range of the DSN, so we&#8217;ll likely lose track of them completely.<\/p>\n<p><!-- START single\/mrec --><br \/>\n<!-- END single\/mrec --><\/p>\n<p>It might take them tens of thousands of years to exit the Oort Cloud, the icy structure that&#8217;s hypothesized to surround our solar system. In about 40,000 years&#8217; time, both Voyagers are expected to zip within two light-years of neighboring stars.<\/p>\n<p>After that, these little monuments to human ingenuity will continue to whizz through the darkness for eons, carrying what may end up being the final vestiges of human culture.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1660802\">\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\");\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/voyager-1-just-activated-a-radio-thats-been-offline-since-1981\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, NASA briefly lost Voyager 1 in the expanse of interstellar space, and when the craft reappeared it was communicating with a transmitter it hasn&#8217;t used in more than &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=129845\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8628],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}