The aging power-challenged Voyager 1 spacecraft suffered another glitch 2 weeks ago – it stopped calling home on its regular channel. Here is the sequence of events that transpired -

Oct 16 – Command sent to turn on a heater
Oct 18 – X-band signal lost; team surmised that the power-overload triggered the fault protection system and Voyager switched to a low-rate low-power X-band mode
Oct 18 – DSN looked for lower-rate X-band signal and found it
(contd)

https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/10/28/after-pause-nasas-voyager-1-communicating-with-mission-team/
#Voyager
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  • AkaSci 🛰️@fosstodon.orgOP
    1·
    13 days ago

    Let’s take a moment to marvel at the design of the Voyager spacecraft software - written in assembly language for a custom 1970s CPU, in less than 70 KB of RAM, able to react to failures and keep comms. up.

    Possibly, NASA may have to turn off one more instrument on Voyager 1. Over the 47 years since launch, Voyager instruments have gradually been shut off as power levels have declined by over 50%.

    But the Voyagers continue to boldly go where no spacecraft has gone before.
    4/n

    • AkaSci 🛰️@fosstodon.orgOP
      1·
      5 days ago

      Three weeks after Voyager 1 autonomously flipped over to using the S-band transmitter for communicating with earth because of a power overload condition, it appears that it is back to communicating using X-band.

      No word from NASA, but presumably the team managed to turn off the heater that caused the power surge and re-enable the X-band transmitter.

      Phew 😓

      https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/dsn.html
      5/n

    • GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai
      1·
      12 days ago

      @AkaSci@fosstodon.org

      Which proves yet again the miracle of unmanned spacecraft.

      I’d really like to see billionaires, duplicate the same thing by shoving themselves into a tin can.

    • simonbp@social.linux.pizza
      1·
      12 days ago

      @AkaSci@fosstodon.org Even calling out a “CPU” feels like a bit of stretch; the formal name is “CCS”, and it’s flight heritage from the Viking landers (but not the Viking orbiters, which were modified Mariner 9s). The CCS has 70 kb memory, which was cutting pretty close even back then, but they couldn’t afford a new computer and had to use the Viking design.

    • Bob Tregilus :tux:📷:copyleft:@fosstodon.org
      1·
      12 days ago

      @AkaSci@fosstodon.org The Voyager mission was and is amazing! I just looked at DSN Now. Canberra is receiving Voyager 2 signal. The power received is -160 dBm (1.0 x 10^-22 kW)! Goldstone is on Voyager 1 but there’s no transmission either up or down. It says round trip light time to Voyager 1 is 1.91 days and to Voyager 2 it’s 1.60 days.