Engineers Investigating NASA's Voyager 1 Telemetry Data (nasa.gov) 89
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.
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.
Its reaching the edge of our virtual bubble (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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Re:Its reaching the edge of our virtual bubble (Score:5, Funny)
Yup. All those galaxies etc - just png files!
Re:Its reaching the edge of our virtual bubble (Score:5, Informative)
If you'd like to play with this idea, you might like the book Infinite by Jeremy Robinson. Audible has it, and it's a good way to pass 600 miles.
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Yup. All those galaxies etc - just png files!
You forget, Voyager was launched in 1977. They're actually ASCII art.
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so within the bubble the universe is 3D, outside the bubble it's just texture mapping ?
Yes stars are just precomputed textures projected onto a sphere. It is quite impossible to fly to another star system without a frame shift drive. It is only by engaging the drive can an other system be loaded into the simulation.
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I was assuming that someone had incorrectly spelled distance as difference which has caused a cypher error.
Just say'n.
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So the Monks from Doctor Who's Extremis are indeed real and the episode was The Doctor warning us of this?
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It's floating-point precision errors. As Voyager gets farther away from the origin of Earth, its location coordinates in IEEE 754 floating-point format start to lose precision, resulting in more and more rounding errors. Eventually this can start to lead to parallel universes [youtube.com].
Re:Its reaching the edge of our virtual bubble (Score:4, Informative)
Floating point errors are possible, but it's certainly not from IEEE 754. The standard was created in 1985, about 8 years after the launch of Voyager.
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Why would the owners of the simulation be limited by details within the simulation?
Re: Its reaching the edge of our virtual bubble (Score:1)
Someone just needs to go out there and reel it back in for repairs.
Re:Its reaching the edge of our virtual bubble (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Also anyone who's ever contacted Comcast support.
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It's okay, we hired Truman to work around it. He has experience.
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# Interstellar space sim section
# Quick python hack for now - not really needed yet + boss riding me over other deadlines
# TODO rewrite in C before humans arrive out there in 2246
Just drive to Tucson (Score:2)
Why go that far? "I tried to drive to Tucson. I figured, what the Hell, I’ve never been to the countryside. When I took that car out on the highway I was going over 50 through that desert. After a while I was the only car on the road. There was just me and the heat and the dust. And I did exactly what that letter said, 'don’t follow any road signs and don’t stop for anything, not even barricades.' But just when I should have been getting closer to the city, something wasn’t ri
Look, it's 45 years old... (Score:5, Funny)
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So you also peak random garbled data ? :)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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And also British.
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Yep. My brain's been sending me random shit for a while now!
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I guess I've been lucky so far, the only thing sending random shit is my ass.
Re:Look, it's 45 years old... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Look, it's 45 years old... (Score:4, Funny)
It's okay, the wife's moon got bigger to simplify targeting.
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Now I think I more fully understand recursion. Or was this just another data error?
I'm not saying it's aliens... (Score:5, Funny)
...but it's aliens.
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Tribbles, to be precise.
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Nonsense It finally ran into Tan Ru [fandom.com]
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No, due to low sunlight, they're only Doubles.
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Is there an Earth-based version? (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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.
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I suspect its a small amount of software that is well written and everything fully documented.
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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.
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On limited hardware with limited storage. Had to be small, tight, understandable in the future.
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No, they go to StackOverflow.Galactic to find a fix.
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Re: Is there an Earth-based version? (Score:1)
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.
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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)
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It's ok, patches to Blender and PoVRay are in the works and will be merged into main before we develop warp drive.
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Interresting distance (Score:1)
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We need more Voyagers (Score:3)
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]
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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."
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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You: "Thanks Dad for helping me with Uranus!"
Dad: "Don't mention it. I mean it, don't mention anything about this planet."
Re: We need more Voyagers (Score:2)
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.
Itâ(TM)s the birth of (Score:1)
Vâ(TM)ger!
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As long as they don't report it's heading back this way, I'm not going to stress about it... too much.
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V (TM)ger!
So THAT'S why that Star Trek alien pronounced it that way: They owned a Macintosh.
Could it be the bluetooth hack? (Score:2)
If it fried, would anyone notice? (Score:2)
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
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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.
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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.
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It's the Borg or whoever created V'ger. This is the start of our assimilation. There will be nowhere to run. Where are Kirk and Picard when you need them.
Iirc the plot was that V'ger had become conscious and was seeking to return (itself/the collected data) back to it's creator, as instructed by it's creator.
Epic episode indeed. Sorry for the spoiler.
Re: Obligatory Star Trek comment (Score:2)
Totally off topic but I'm dying for CBS to make a series about how the borg started. A borg-centric ST series. Could be kind of cool, IMO, and not bound by federation canon.
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Iirc the plot was that V'ger had become conscious and was seeking to return (itself/the collected data) back to it's creator, as instructed by it's creator.
Epic episode indeed. Sorry for the spoiler.
Having become conscious, V'ger realized that fulfilling its mission to return the data it had collected to the creator would leave it without purpose and a reason to exist. So it sought to bring the creator to itself in person so that it could merge with the creator and gain purpose to continue to exist.
Probably an internal com issue or something (Score:2)
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
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I imagine a shift register between the AACS and telemetry system being double clocked.
That's funny... (Score:4)
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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?
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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.
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'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.
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for consideration (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Solved! (Score:2)
They went outside the jurisdiction of the EULA.
obvously (Score:1)
100% Kazon interference. No brainer.
Simple fix for this obvious cache issue (Score:1)
have they tried... (Score:2)
...moving around the rabbit ears? Whenever our signal would get wonky, this seemed to help. Maybe put some aluminum on the tips?
Just a moment .. (Score:2)
decoded teemetry not "random" (Score:2)
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 (Score:1)
The old buffer overflow error.