nepszava.hu;
data; Voyager; spacecraft;
2024-04-23 20:00:00
From November 2023 until now, meaningful communication with him was interrupted due to a computer error.
According to NASA, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is sending usable information back to Earth again after a computer error left it unable to receive any “readable” data since last November. Engineers have now corrected the error, the BBC writes about the 47-year-old unmanned space vehicle, as they say “the most distant object of mankind”.
– For now, Voyager is only sending back medical data from its on-board systems, but in the course of further work, functional scientific instruments will be made available again – says NASA’s statement. Voyager-1 is now more than 24 billion kilometers from us, the distance is indicated by the fact that the probe’s radio messages only reach us after 22 and a half hours.
Voyager 1 was launched from Earth on September 5, 1977 for an interplanetary voyage. Its primary mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn, but in 2012 it moved beyond the bubble of gas emitted by the Sun – a region known as the heliosphere – and is now in interstellar space. A few days before, the “sister spacecraft”, Voyager 2, was launched. The latter moved more slowly and is currently 20 billion kilometers from Earth.
According to NASA’s website, each Voyager has a gold disc called Sounds of the Earth, which could play more than a hundred images and natural sounds such as surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales and other animals. The disc contains greetings in 55 languages and a selection of music from different cultures and eras. Among the total of 27 pieces of music, there are works by Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, but the music of various peoples is played, from Senegalese percussion instruments to the night song of the Navajo Indians to Balkan songs. Among the modern performers, Louis Armstrong performs Melancholy Blues and Chuck Berry performs Johnny B. Goode.
Tags: Voyager1 spacecraft billion kilometers Earth recovered sending data
