Space: Voyager 1 no longer responds

A headache for NASA. The American space agency is no longer able to communicate correctly with Voyager 1, its oldest and most distant probe which is sailing beyond the solar system.

Voyager 1 has been in space for 46 years with its twin Voyager 2. They are the two oldest spacecraft in history. Voyager 1 is the most distant probe. It sails more than 24 billion kilometers from Earth, therefore outside our solar system. But for several days, NASA has no longer received the scientific data usually transmitted by the probe. Instead, the teams receive a sort of error message, in binary language, a sort of repetitive gibberish based on 0s and 1s. It appears to be a computer bug in one of the team’s computers. edge.

A worrying failure because this probe is extremely valuable, being the most distant man-made object from Earth. In the space of 46 years, thanks to its camera and its instruments for studying cosmic rays, magnetic fields, radio signals or the composition of certain surfaces, it has enabled several new and complementary observations of everything that the until now we knew, like those of the rings of Jupiter or Saturn, the composition of the atmosphere of Titan or even, one of the most distant views of our planet, a photo in which the Earth is only a small pale blue dot.

To try to solve the problem, scientists have already tried to remotely turn the system on and off, but it did not work. This is a big technical and IT challenge because given the age of the spacecraft, NASA technicians must delve back into the technological knowledge of the late 1970s, consult original design documents for the probe, which are as old as several decades. Above all, you should not send an order that could permanently damage the system. And all this taking into account distances because orders sent from Earth take 22.5 hours to reach the probe and you have to wait 45 hours to get a response back.

This is not the first time that transmission problems have arisen between the two Voyager probes and NASA, but until now, the failures had been resolved. This time again, scientists hope to meet this challenge because normally Voyager is potentially capable of transmitting data until 2025.