The Voyager 1 spacecraft lost contact with NASA and don’t know if communication can be reestablished.

venerable spacecraft Sailor 1 from NASA, Launched 46 years ago, just weeks after its twin Voyager 2 cannot communicate efficiently with Earth, After a problem was reported with its communications antenna since late last year.

Most of the challenges facing potTo resolve the complexity lies in the fact that, after a journey of almost 50 years, Voyager 1 is approximately 24 billion kilometers away from Earthmoving at a speed greater than 60 thousand kilometers per hour, Therefore any order sent from Earth to investigate applies 23 hours,

Collects data about health and condition from damaged computer scientific and engineering equipment Space ship, Then, the subsystem with which it is associated Combines that information and sends it to our planet,

The fact is that, in recent weeks, these messages, which should be understandable to experts, have been appearing Repeated patterns that don’t make sense,

It’s just that the ship has started ordering Repeating pattern of ones and zeros on Earth, as if it is “stuck”. The spacecraft smoothly executes instructions it receives from NASA mission controllers, but the scientific and engineering data it sends back is no longer useful to the engineers who operate it from the U.S. space agency control center.

against the odds, NASA engineers They are working to fix the anomaly, although estimates are it may still take several weeks.

After determining that the source of the problem was the flight data system, NASA team decided to restart the investigation Try to return it to the state it was in before. However, Voyager 1 continued to send back untested data and, in recent days, researchers have discovered that the space instrument You are losing your ability to communicate,

NASA is still working to resolve a problem reported in December with one of three computers on the aging Voyager 1 interstellar spacecraft, called the Flight Data System (FDS). “We can talk to the spacecraft and it can hear us, but given the incredible distances it is a slow process From spacecraft to Earth,” the agency says in one of its accounts on X. It takes 22.5 hours for commands from mission controllers on Earth to reach Voyager 1, which is exploring the outer regions of our solar system more than 24 billion kilometers from Earth.

That means Engineering team has to wait up to 45 hours for a response of Voyager 1 and determine if the command had the desired result. The spacecraft, launched in 1977, receives and executes commands sent from Earth; However, the FDS does not communicate properly with one of the probe’s sub-systems, called a telecommunications unit (TMU).

“As a result, no scientific or engineering data is sent to Earth,” NASA reported in December. Previously, the TMU began transmitting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros as if it was “stuck”. After ruling out other possibilities, the Voyager team determined that the source of the problem was the FDS. The team first attempted to restart the FDS and return it to the state it was in before the problem began, but the spacecraft did not return any useful data.

among other things, The FDS is designed to collect scientific instruments as well as engineering data on the health and condition of the spacecraft. It then combines that information into a “packet” of data that the TMU sends back to Earth. The data is in the form of ones and zeros, or binary code. The variable combination of two numbers is the basis of all computer languages.

Finding solutions to investigative challenges often involves consulting decades-old original documents written by engineers who did not anticipate the problems emerging today.

As a result, the team is taking time to understand how a new command will impact spacecraft operations to avoid unintended consequences, the space agency explains. The mission of this 722 kg robotic probe is to currently explore and study the boundaries of the Solar System, including the Kuiper Belt and beyond, as well as to explore the immediate interstellar space to its end.

Voyager mission project manager Suzanne Dodd stated in the New York Times that, “From a scientific point of view this is a huge loss”, However, his team still has hope as the investigation has survived several technical failures, although none as serious as the one it is suffering now.

The spacecraft was launched in 1977, the same year as its ‘twin’, Voyager 2, was launched. Initially, both probes were not going to leave the Solar System and their mission was to explore the environment of the most distant planets –Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

However, after the good results obtained, NASA decided to give it a second life to explore outside the limits of our system. Even though this failure foretells the end of Voyager 1, it He has achieved much more than he originally intended. And, similarly, other probes will continue to discover what lies beyond our borders.

The spacecraft and its twin, Voyager 2, are the two longest-lived spacecraft in history. And they have been outside our solar system for more than a decade, traveling to the ends of the universe in search of some form of life.

,Sailors continue to make amazing discoveries, inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers. Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, said, “We don’t know how long the mission will continue, but we can be confident that the spacecraft will provide even more scientific surprises as it moves away from Earth.”

“Silent Ambassador” ultimately will cool down as they enter what scientists call the ancient interstellar medium, As the Sun’s influence diminishes and turbulence decreases, probes are likely to find mixed material from other stars.

However, detecting the next star impact is beyond spacecraft. Voyager 1 will approach a star called AC+79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis in 40,000 years, While the flight time of Voyager 2 is similar to that of a star named Ross 248 in the Andromeda constellation., Now that both spacecraft are ending their useful lives due to their energy supplies being exhausted, the last time scientists will hear about them will be in the 2030s.