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NASA

Engineers Investigating NASA's Voyager 1 Telemetry Data (nasa.gov) 89

Posted by BeauHD from the strange-data dept.
The engineering team with NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is trying to solve a mystery: The interstellar explorer is operating normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, along with gathering and returning science data. But readouts from the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS) don't reflect what's actually happening onboard. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports: The AACS controls the 45-year-old spacecraft's orientation. Among other tasks, it keeps Voyager 1's high-gain antenna pointed precisely at Earth, enabling it to send data home. All signs suggest the AACS is still working, but the telemetry data it's returning is invalid. For instance, the data may appear to be randomly generated, or does not reflect any possible state the AACS could be in. The issue hasn't triggered any onboard fault protection systems, which are designed to put the spacecraft into "safe mode" -- a state where only essential operations are carried out, giving engineers time to diagnose an issue. Voyager 1's signal hasn't weakened, either, which suggests the high-gain antenna remains in its prescribed orientation with Earth.

The team will continue to monitor the signal closely as they continue to determine whether the invalid data is coming directly from the AACS or another system involved in producing and sending telemetry data. Until the nature of the issue is better understood, the team cannot anticipate whether this might affect how long the spacecraft can collect and transmit science data. Voyager 1 is currently 14.5 billion miles (23.3 billion kilometers) from Earth, and it takes light 20 hours and 33 minutes to travel that difference. That means it takes roughly two days to send a message to Voyager 1 and get a response -- a delay the mission team is well accustomed to.
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Engineers Investigating NASA's Voyager 1 Telemetry Data More

Engineers Investigating NASA's Voyager 1 Telemetry Data

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  • Its reaching the edge of our virtual bubble (Score:5, Funny)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Thursday May 19, 2022 @05:32AM (#62548462) Homepage

    Where our simulations coders decided to implement the laws of physics a bit more roughly than close to earth to save CPU cycles. Soon Voyager will hit the landscape clipping distance and disappear altogether!

  • Look, it's 45 years old... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Thursday May 19, 2022 @06:11AM (#62548534)
    I'm hitting that milestone myself, and I can attest to how this sort of thing just happens.

  • I'm not saying it's aliens... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jedi Holocron ( 225191 ) on Thursday May 19, 2022 @06:12AM (#62548536) Homepage Journal

    ...but it's aliens.

  • Is there an Earth-based version? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JoeRobe ( 207552 ) on Thursday May 19, 2022 @06:49AM (#62548594) Homepage

    Anyone know if the Voyagers still have (or ever had) a functioning earth-based copy that NASA could test? I'm thinking along the lines of what they have have with Mars rovers, where if there's a malfunction or if the rover is stuck they can play with the Earth-based version to figure out a game plan.

    • Re:Is there an Earth-based version? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Thursday May 19, 2022 @07:04AM (#62548622)

      Yes and no. 3 Voyagers were built. Before launch one of the 3 had to be cannibalized because of problems with the other 2. After launch, this spare was used for tests. E.g. they had problems with the camera platform and were able to use the spare to devise a solution.
      It's not clear what happened to the spare. Some parts were reused for other spacecraft.

      There was also a Development Test Model, this was handed over to the Smithsonian after the Voyagers were launched.

      So they used to have full copies that were used for testing, but I don't think the team have a full copy these days.

      • It's cool they still have people that understand and can update the software on this.

        • I suspect its a small amount of software that is well written and everything fully documented.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by sinij ( 911942 )

            I suspect its a small amount of software that is well written and everything fully documented.

            Clearly, something like that is a relic of the distant past.

            • On limited hardware with limited storage. Had to be small, tight, understandable in the future.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          It's cool they still have people that understand and can update the software on this.

          No, they go to StackOverflow.Galactic to find a fix.

      • Given their age, I suspect even if they had a complete duplicate on Earth, it would be mostly non-functional after 45+ years of being exposed to atmospheric oxygen and humidity. Corrosion resistance isn't exactly a high priority in the design of something which will spend its entire lifetime in vacuum. Though having the original equipment could be useful for modeling unforeseen quirks in its behavior (e.g. induced currents in some of the adjacent wire traces).
        • If they had a duplicate, they could have just put it in a vacuum chamber, the better to mimick the conditions of outer space. Operations could be done by robot or earth bound astronauts.

        • Whereas the production unit has been coddled in the ideal environment of outer space? It's not like that one's been exposed to massive amounts of radiation or anything. It's a marvel than 1977 components were so resilient that even hardened versions can still function at all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Agripa ( 139780 )

          Given their age, I suspect even if they had a complete duplicate on Earth, it would be mostly non-functional after 45+ years of being exposed to atmospheric oxygen and humidity. Corrosion resistance isn't exactly a high priority in the design of something which will spend its entire lifetime in vacuum. Though having the original equipment could be useful for modeling unforeseen quirks in its behavior (e.g. induced currents in some of the adjacent wire traces).

          Industrial electronics that is older than Voyager and well treated on Earth survives until now just fine, or can be easily repaired because only the common parts tend to fail. The same applies to mechanical systems if they were designed for it.

  • Simulation optimization (Score:5, Funny)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday May 19, 2022 @07:22AM (#62548664)
    Voyager 1 reached outside of rendered universe, resulting in buffer overflow of computing platform that runs the simulation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      It's ok, patches to Blender and PoVRay are in the works and will be merged into main before we develop warp drive.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sinij ( 911942 )
        Look, current hardware can barely handle speed of light, you already have all kind of relativity glitches with time dilation near the limit, warp drive is simply off the table. It will be a meteorite strike patch.

  • Interresting distance (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    23.3 billion kilometers thats around 1E48 * sqrt(2) planck units. Can someone please check the simulation parameters otherwise we will need to reboot this as people might notice and the experiment would then become invalid.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually 2^160 planck units is 23.6 billion km seems oddly close

  • We need more Voyagers (Score:3)

    by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Thursday May 19, 2022 @08:21AM (#62548822)

    Seriously, I did a 4th grade project on Uranus (heh) and most of the information came from Voyager-2 having done the only flyby of the planet. Incredible that we are still getting information from these machines. I have to imagine some people working at JPL are there because they were inspired by these missions as children.

    I am very glad to hear NASA is looking into sending probes [planetary.org] back to the outer gas giants. [planetary.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I got a bit upset at my daughter for "being stuck with" Uranus for a grade school Solar System project. I asked why she didn't pick another planet, and she responded, "I like the pretty blue and green, but Neptune was already taken." I replied, "There's lots of jokes people will make about Uranus. Be prepared."

      • Do they still make her (or you more accurately) construct a styrofoam model of the planet? I was assigned Uranus and it's just a bit boring since its just flat green, no striations or spots or craters even. At least it "technically" has rings so you can illustrate how it's sideways which is neat.

        My parents advised me to just make the joke up front and get everyone's giggles out of the way. Good lesson there.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          What did you use to make the rings?

          I think the dog munched my daughter's model before I got a chance to see it after work. (It was already graded, fortunately.)

          • Took some large styrofoam wreaths/donuts and my dad sliced it into thin strips with a table saw. some craft wire to attach to the ball and voila, some decent rings.

            In retrospect should have painted them black to be accurate but I still got the grade.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Tablizer ( 95088 )

              You: "Thanks Dad for helping me with Uranus!"

              Dad: "Don't mention it. I mean it, don't mention anything about this planet."

      • I was taught in middle school that the pronunciation is YOUR-in-us. I have no idea if that's an "official" pronunciation or if Mr. Greene just wanted to avoid the 6th-graders laughing.

  • It may have fallen victim to the New Bluetooth Hack: https://mobile.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org] I read that it can unlock all kinds of devices. Could it have affected Voyager too?

  • If memory serves, the Voyagers are spin stabilized. And out at 24 bn km or however far it is, I wouldn't expect there to be anything like solar radiation pressure or interplanetary dust to perturb the spacecraft attitude.

    So it's quite possible the attitude system is dead and spitting out random numbers but the axis of the main bus is still pointed in generally the correct direction by virtue of angular inertia alone.

    As for the signal strength not degrading...that's necessarily a low precision measurement. T

    • Perhaps the current Dumbocrat Congress should hold hearings on the matter.

      Then implement even more deficit spending to fund a human-based expedition to go out to Voyager and find out what really happened.

    • If memory serves, the Voyagers are spin stabilized.

      It serves you poorly. Voyager is stabilized by three gyroscopes and 16 thrusters. The smaller and less sophisticated predecessors Pioneer 10 and 11 were spin stabilized however.

  • So most likely, this is an issue in the communication where those values are being read by the system that aggregates the telemetry being transmitted. Could be an output issue on the AACS, an input issue on the aggregator side, or a wire that is just not flowing a clean signal anymore between them. If ti's still pointing correctly, that likely means the AACS itself is working fine still. With bad telem, they wont' get warning if it starts slowly dying, they'll just find out when it stops pointing at Eart

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      I imagine a shift register between the AACS and telemetry system being double clocked.
       

  • That's funny... (Score:4)

    by R_Ramjet ( 994878 ) on Thursday May 19, 2022 @09:55AM (#62549124)
    'The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka” but “That’s funny...” ' —Isaac Asimov

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      With science content itself, "Hmm, that's funny" is usually a good thing. But not with communication systems.

      When has "Hmm, that's funny" ever resulted in something pleasant under Windows?

      • With science content itself, "Hmm, that's funny" is usually a good thing. But not with communication systems.

        When has "Hmm, that's funny" ever resulted in something pleasant under Windows?

        Sounds like user error if you're trying to use Windows as a communication system.

    • 'The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka” but “That’s funny...” ' —Isaac Asimov

      It's also a very scary phrase to hear in sci-fi.

    • Interestingly, "Eureka" (I've found it) and "that's funny" tie for the least exciting phrase to hear in bed...

  • for consideration (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Possibly voyager is entering into a region of space that does not conform to the standard model of physics/cosmology.

    for example, there are models that suggest gravity is more of a local force than realized and other forces take over at interstellar distances.

  • They went outside the jurisdiction of the EULA.

  • 100% Kazon interference. No brainer.

  • You just need to return the computer to the office, plug into any network jack, and log in with your new password.

  • ...moving around the rabbit ears? Whenever our signal would get wonky, this seemed to help. Maybe put some aluminum on the tips?

  • .. I've just picked up a fault in the AE-35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure within 72 hours.

  • They decoded one repeating segment of the telemetry. It is an ASCII sequence: "Tan Ru" over and over.

    NASA now has cryptographers working on the next segment. It has a different structure that is similar to the image capture data that's been missing. Of course, the latest craze is the "what does a space phenomenon sound like", using an artificial mapping of the data to sound frequencies. A little like a "back masking" pop track played backwards, this one sounds like the words "Sterile Eyes"! Whatever that's

  • The old buffer overflow error.

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