NASA sent a software update to Voyager 2 12 billion kilometers away
By ForGeeks NASA hopes to fix a glitch that caused data from «Voyager 1» to be garbled for several months in 2022.
NASA hopes to fix the problem, which caused data from «Voyager 1» to be garbled for several months in 2022.
NASA has begun the painstaking process of updating the software on its two spacecraft. This operation would be difficult regardless of the mission, but it is all the more dangerous in the case of the Voyager probes. These vehicles have been traveling for decades and are the only operational probes outside of our solar system. The patch is intended to fix the problem that caused the 2022 Voyager 1 communications to break down, but if the patch breaks the probes, nothing will change.
The patch is designed to fix the problem that caused Voyager 1 to break down communications in 2022, but if the patch breaks the probes, nothing will change.
The «Voyager» team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has confirmed that it first passed the software patch to «Voyager-2». Because the spacecraft is more than 12 billion miles from Earth, it took 18 hours to retrieve the data. There is concern that initializing the software could overwrite or otherwise damage other parts of the probe’s software. Given its age and distance, there is no way to be sure that it will work.
At this point, it is not possible to be sure.
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In 2022, Voyager 1, which is even farther from Earth, 15 billion miles away, had a communications problem. JPL said at the time that Voyager-1 began transmitting garbled telemetry data because the attitude and control system (AACS) was transmitting data through the wrong onboard computer. The team eventually fixed the problem by ordering the AACS system to switch to the correct computer. Although Voyager 2 has never encountered a similar problem, it is identical on a hardware and software level.
The Voyager 2 is identical on a hardware and software level.
