The Voyager 1 spacecraft from NASA is speaking gibberish. Concerned are its Earthly friends.

The Voyager 1 spacecraft from NASA is speaking gibberish. Concerned are its Earthly friends.

Before it launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the summer of 1977, Stamatios “Tom” Krimigis last saw the Voyager 1 space probe in person.

Voyager 1 is currently more than 15 billion miles distant, past what many believe to be the solar system’s limit. However, Krimigis’s on-board equipment continues to function well.

“I am astonished beyond belief,” declares Krimigis, pointing out that the spacecraft’s initial journey to Jupiter and Saturn was only intended to endure for roughly four years.

But these days, when he thinks of Voyager 1, he’s experiencing something else as well.

He says, “To be honest, I’m very worried.”

Unintelligible transmissions have been sent back to Earth by the Voyager 1 spacecraft since mid-November. It sounds like the elderly spacecraft is having trouble speaking because of some sort of stroke.

Project manager Suzanne Dodd of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has overseen the Voyager interstellar mission since 2010, says, “It basically stopped talking to us in a coherent manner.” “It’s a serious problem.”

Voyager 1 has switched from transmitting binary code communications to only sending back alternating 1s and 0s. To reset things, Dodd’s team has attempted the standard methods, but to no avail.

The onboard computer that gathers data and prepares it for shipment home appears to be having issues. According to Dodd, all of this computer technology is rudimentary in comparison to something like your car’s key fob.

“The button you press to open the door of your car, that has more compute power than the Voyager spacecrafts do,” she continues. “It’s remarkable that they keep flying, and that they’ve flown for 46-plus years.”

Many of the people who conceived and constructed Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, have passed away. Thus, the roughly dozen members of Dodd’s team have had to go through yellowed records and outdated mimeographs in an attempt to solve Voyager 1’s current problems.

“They’re doing a lot of work to try and get into the heads of the original developers and figure out why they designed something the way they did and what we could possibly try that might give us some answers to what’s going wrong with the spacecraft,” Dodd adds.

They do have a list of potential remedies, she claims. They will probably begin to issue increasingly audacious and dangerous orders to Voyager 1 as time goes on.

“The things that we will do going forward are probably more challenging in the sense that you can’t tell exactly if it’s going to execute correctly — or if you’re going to maybe do something you didn’t want to do, inadvertently,” Dodd adds.

Project scientist Linda Spilker of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports that she arrives at work to find “all of these circuit diagrams up on the wall with sticky notes attached.” Spilker is involved with the Voyager mission. And these folks are simply having a blast attempting to debug equipment from the 1960s and 1970s.”

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” she declares. “There’s a lot of creativity there.”

However, this is a laborious procedure that could take several weeks or even months. Because Voyager 1 is so far away, it takes nearly a full day for a signal to reach it and another full day for a response.

“We’ll keep trying,” states Dodd, “and it won’t be quick.”

Meanwhile, scientists like Caltech and Carnegie Observatories astronomer Stella Ocker are disappointed by Voyager 1’s discombobulation.

“We haven’t been getting science data since this anomaly started,” Ocker states, “and what that means is that we don’t know what the environment that the spacecraft is traveling through looks like.”

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” she says. “There’s a lot of creativity there.”

But this is a strenuous process that can take a few weeks or even months to complete. Due to its great distance, Voyager 1 requires almost a full day to receive a signal and an additional day to respond.

 

Dodd says, “We’ll keep trying, and it won’t be quick.”

Meanwhile, the disorientation of Voyager 1 has saddened scientists including astronomer Stella Ocker of Carnegie Observatories and Caltech.

“We haven’t been getting science data since this anomaly started,” says Ocker, “and what that means is that we don’t know what the environment that the spacecraft is traveling through looks like.”

The plutonium power system that powers the two Voyager probes will ultimately run out of fuel. To save energy and prolong the life of the Voyager probes, mission managers have shut off heaters and taken other steps.

“We’re kind of approaching that,” laughs Krimigis, “but my motto for a long time was 50 years or bust.”

The declining power supply will compel management to begin shutting down scientific apparatus one by one in a few years. The last instrument may continue to function until approximately 2030.

According to Krimigis, both of these fabled space probes will essentially become “space junk” once the power goes off and they are dead.

He says, “It hurts to say that.” Despite having taken part in space missions to every planet, Krimigis claims a particular place in his heart for the Voyager program.

As Spilker notes, every spaceship will continue to orbit the planet while bearing a copy of a golden record that contains greetings in several languages and Earth sounds.

“Science’s purpose will come to an end. However, Spilker notes that “a portion of Voyager and ourselves will endure in the interstellar medium,” adding that the golden records “may even outlast humanity as we know it.”

However, Krimigis is skeptical that an alien will ever find a Voyager probe and take a listen.

Saying, “Space is empty, “because there’s probably very little chance that Voyager will ever encounter a planet.”

Voyager 1 will reach another star in roughly 40,000 years; it will pass within 1.7 light years of what NASA refers to as “an obscure star in the constellation Ursa Minor,” popularly known as the Little Dipper.

Scientists have been planning a new mission that, if financed and launched by NASA, will send another probe even farther out into the space between stars since they know that the Voyager probes are running out of time.

“If it happens, it would launch in the 2030s,” states Ocker, “and it would reach twice as far as Voyager 1 in just 50 years.”