Beaming faces, clapping of hands, one man even raised both arms – cheers in the control room. Such scenes are familiar from other space missions, for example when a new rocket has successfully taken off or even landed on the moon. However, in the photo now sent by NASA, another event is celebrated: the space probe Voyager 1 worked again. Translated into human language with something like this message: “I’m healthy, carry on. News from me up here soon.” Sure, she’s just a machine, but her story allows for a bit of humanity.
The probe, which weighs just 825.5 kilograms, is simply incorrigible. Launched on September 5, 1977 from the famous ramp on Cape Canaveral in Florida, it has once again overcome a crisis. Originally it was only designed to last at least four years, but it has now been flying ever deeper into space for 46 years. It is the furthest man-made object from Earth. She is the twin of Voyager 2which had started on a different trajectory a few days earlier and is also traveling at the edge of the solar system.
The answer came on Monday of this week. Operation successful!
On November 14th last year Voyager 1 once again caused stress for the technicians and researchers in the control room at NASA’s “Jet Propulsion Laboratory” in Southern California. Suddenly stopped sending readable scientific and technical data. At least the earthly controllers were able to determine from a distance of a good 24 billion kilometers that the probe was still on course and responding to commands. So at least no cosmic collision was reported. Breathe a sigh of relief on earth.
In fact, in March of this year, NASA engineers even found the cause of the probe’s sudden silence: a malfunction in one of the three computers on board, the so-called Flight Data Subsystem (FDS). This module normally packages and sends the data to Earth. An FDS chip could no longer read a certain code required for data export. The technicians have now managed to reposition this code into other areas of the FDS memory. Not an easy exercise, considering that each radio signal takes 22.5 hours to reach the probe and the response takes just as long. NASA sent the correction order on April 18th, and the answer came on Monday of this week. Operation successful!
Now fly and send Voyager 1 further, moving 61,000 kilometers further away from Earth every hour. The fuel to correct the position will probably last until 2040, the radionuclide batteries that power the electronics will eventually weaken and the thermoelectric elements will wear out. Sooner or later the probe will necessarily fall silent for good. Contact with Earth will probably be lost sometime in the 2030s.
But Voyager will continue to fly when the flyby of Jupiter (March 1979) and Saturn (November 1980) is already gray history. In about 40,000 years it will reach the star Gliese 445. And in case she encounters aliens along the way, she has a gold-plated copper data plate with her that can be used to learn that people live in the Milky Way.