Voyager 1 Gives Controllers The Silent Treatment - But It Has Communicated Again
"Arthur T Knackerbracket" writes:
Voyager 1 gives controllers the silent treatment
[...] The incident happened on October 18: NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) couldn't detect a signal from the probe. On October 19, on the next scheduled communication attempt, there was still nothing. Was this it? Had the decades-long galactic venture finally ended?
Things are operating on a knife's edge for the two veteran spacecraft, which will reach their half-century next year. Voyager 2 suffered an antenna pointing issue in 2023, and a low power condition caused Voyager 1 to unexpectedly turn off one of its two radio transmitters.
The good news is that on October 20, the signal reappeared, leaving engineers wondering why Voyager 1 temporarily went silent.
Thus far, it seems a group of thrusters went offline and their backups were turned on. This could indicate onboard computers detected a problem and put the spacecraft into a safe mode.
[...] She said, "We're just going to one day not hear the signal from the DSN, and we're going to rush around and make sure that it's not something on the ground."
Months of listening will follow, before engineers throw in the towel and declare the mission over. And then? Maybe a farewell message sent to the last known location.
Thankfully, in this case, the signal returned, so no need for a goodbye transmission just yet.
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