May 11, 2010 at 13:38Voyager is out of order
The Voyager 2 spacecraft, which has reached the edge of the solar system in more than 30 years, has broken down. Due to the failure of the data processing system, scientists cannot properly read new information from the ship.
In 1977, with an interval of two weeks, two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched from different directions from the Earth. Both satellites have successfully worked out and continue to work out their scientific program, which was to obtain images of giant planets and objects at close range the border of the solar system. One of the latest scientific achievements of Voyager is that outside the boundaries of the shock wave that forms in the region where the speed of the solar wind particles becomes lower than the speed of sound, the temperature and other properties of the medium turned out to be completely different from what astrophysicists expected.
NASA employees discovered a malfunction in the Voyager 2 spacecraft, according to the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website.
April 22, engineers drew attention to the fact that the data transmitted by the device are different from normal. The probe, at the earliest opportunity, was switched to the mode when only internal data are received on Earth, that is, information about the state of the device itself. This happened a little more than a day, because Voyager 2 is located at a distance of 13.8 billion km from the Earth, and the signal to it goes 13 hours in one direction. Work in this mode showed that the ship’s own data processing system failed, and that’s why scientists are unable to decrypt the information coming from it.
Voyager devices are the most remote man-made devices from Earth. The probe under the number “one” managed to fly further than its “twin brother” - almost 17 billion km from our planet to it.
Initially, the mission of Voyager 2 was to be four years in time, and the purpose of the scientific program of the apparatus was Jupiter and Saturn with their companions. But, as often happens, the probe was able to continue working after the first time allotted to it and for 33 years, as one of the Voyager project researchers Ed Stone stated, he transmitted “a lot of unique data”. "We have never seen Uranus and Neptune so close before," Stone said, adding that it will soon become clear whether NASA engineers will be able to fix the problems and whether the device can continue to transmit scientific data.
For Voyager 2, this is not the first malfunction that occurred over 33 years of flight. The apparatus of the apparatus had already failed and the compensator of the radio transmitter, and one of the memory cells of the onboard computer, and there were problems with the power supply and the television platform. In addition, the constant removal of the device from the Earth requires constant modernization of the receiving equipment complex, so that the signal from Voyager can be fixed.
On the disk, in particular, the sounds of the Earth are recorded (the whisper of a mother and the cry of a child, the voices of birds and animals, the noise of wind and rain, etc.), famous musical works, from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Louis Armstrong and Chuck Berry, greetings in 54 languages (in Russian it says “Hello, I welcome you!”) and the appeal of Jimmy Carter, who at the time the devices were launched in 1977, was the president of the United States.
About five years later, the devices will leave their orbits around the Sun and go to the depths of the galaxy, where maybe someone finds them, receives a disk and can decrypt the information available on it.
Source
In 1977, with an interval of two weeks, two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched from different directions from the Earth. Both satellites have successfully worked out and continue to work out their scientific program, which was to obtain images of giant planets and objects at close range the border of the solar system. One of the latest scientific achievements of Voyager is that outside the boundaries of the shock wave that forms in the region where the speed of the solar wind particles becomes lower than the speed of sound, the temperature and other properties of the medium turned out to be completely different from what astrophysicists expected.
NASA employees discovered a malfunction in the Voyager 2 spacecraft, according to the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website.
April 22, engineers drew attention to the fact that the data transmitted by the device are different from normal. The probe, at the earliest opportunity, was switched to the mode when only internal data are received on Earth, that is, information about the state of the device itself. This happened a little more than a day, because Voyager 2 is located at a distance of 13.8 billion km from the Earth, and the signal to it goes 13 hours in one direction. Work in this mode showed that the ship’s own data processing system failed, and that’s why scientists are unable to decrypt the information coming from it.
Voyager devices are the most remote man-made devices from Earth. The probe under the number “one” managed to fly further than its “twin brother” - almost 17 billion km from our planet to it.
Initially, the mission of Voyager 2 was to be four years in time, and the purpose of the scientific program of the apparatus was Jupiter and Saturn with their companions. But, as often happens, the probe was able to continue working after the first time allotted to it and for 33 years, as one of the Voyager project researchers Ed Stone stated, he transmitted “a lot of unique data”. "We have never seen Uranus and Neptune so close before," Stone said, adding that it will soon become clear whether NASA engineers will be able to fix the problems and whether the device can continue to transmit scientific data.
According to preliminary calculations, the battery energy of the device should be enough until at least 2025.
For Voyager 2, this is not the first malfunction that occurred over 33 years of flight. The apparatus of the apparatus had already failed and the compensator of the radio transmitter, and one of the memory cells of the onboard computer, and there were problems with the power supply and the television platform. In addition, the constant removal of the device from the Earth requires constant modernization of the receiving equipment complex, so that the signal from Voyager can be fixed.
In addition to scientific equipment on board each of the probes is a gold disk containing information about the Earth.
On the disk, in particular, the sounds of the Earth are recorded (the whisper of a mother and the cry of a child, the voices of birds and animals, the noise of wind and rain, etc.), famous musical works, from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Louis Armstrong and Chuck Berry, greetings in 54 languages (in Russian it says “Hello, I welcome you!”) and the appeal of Jimmy Carter, who at the time the devices were launched in 1977, was the president of the United States.
About five years later, the devices will leave their orbits around the Sun and go to the depths of the galaxy, where maybe someone finds them, receives a disk and can decrypt the information available on it.
Source