Veteran spacecraft shows signs of sanity with poke from engineers
An engineer with the Deep Space Network was able to decode it, and by March 10, the team determined that it contained a complete memory dump from the FDS.Pasadena Star-News report
that the data being transmitted from the probe was"not exactly what we would expect, but they do look like something that can show us that the FDS is at least partially working."NASA engineers scratch heads as Voyager 1 starts spouting cosmic gibberish Dodd was referring to the ones and zeroes streaming from the spacecraft. Previously, the probe's telemetry modulation unit had begun in mid-DecemberThe next step is to study the memory read-out and compare it to one transmitted before the problem arose. A solution to the issue could then be devised.
The time lag is a problem. A command from Earth takes 22.5 hours to reach the probe, and the same period is needed again for a response. This means a 45-hour wait to see what a given command might have done. The availability of skills is also an issue. Many of the engineers who worked on the project - Voyager 1 launched in 1977 - are no longer around, and the team that remains is faced with trawling through reams of decades-old documents to deal with unanticipated issues arising today.