Voyager 1 Turns On Transmitter Who Has Been Dead For Dozens Due To System Errors

Voyager 1 spacecraft display (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA NASA lost Voyager 1, a spacecraft assigned to observe outside the solar system, last October. This spacecraft reappeared, but with a dead radio decades ago.

This problem first appeared on October 16. At that time, the US space agency gave an order to Voyager 1 to turn on one of its heaters. Instead of responding, this vehicle disappeared from Earth's reach.

NASA realized that Voyager 1 had disappeared about two days after the task was given. This happens because of the distance between Voyager 1 and Earth which is very far, reaching 25 billion kilometers. It takes 46 hours for the process of sending and receiving messages.

After observing, the Internal Space Network (DSN) managed to detect the errors that occurred in Voyager 1. This spacecraft actually received a message well, but the heating process that NASA ordered actually triggered errors in the system.

Reporting from Sciencealert, the Voyager 1 system will turn off other non-essential systems automatically to conserve energy. While other systems are turned off, Voyager 1 also reduces the rate of data transmission and changes the X-band signal.

Initially DSN managed to connect with Voyager 1 and the situation seemed stable, but the signal was cut off again the next day. Most likely, this happened because the X-band turned off the fault protection system.

If this continues, the X-band transmitter can completely shut down and Voyager 1 will switch to the S-band transmitter. In fact, this spacecraft has never used an S-band transmitter to connect to Earth since 1981.

Fortunately, this problem came to fruition after DSN reconnected with Voyager 1. NASA has also sent orders back on October 22 and let the X-band shut down in the near future. To date, NASA is still looking into how Voyager 1 can change its system's signal to a dead emitter for decades.