Their attempts bore fruit
Perhaps the Voyager 1 spacecraft will still be able to be brought back to life. NASA scientists have announced that changes have recently appeared in the data sent by the probe, which give hope for the return of control over the device.
On March 3, the mission team detected activity in one section of the flight data subsystem (FDS). This activity was different from the rest of the unreadable data stream that scientists began receiving several months ago. Let us recall that at the end of 2023, NASA published a message that the probe was sending only “binary gibberish” to Earth.
The new signal, unfortunately, still does not have the format that was used by the device in normal mode. However, an engineer from the Deep Space Network was able to decode the new signal and discovered that it contained data from the entire FDS memory.
FDS memory includes code, instructions on what to do, and variables or values used in the code, which can change depending on commands or the state of the spacecraft.
The signal also contains scientific or engineering data for the downlink. NASA says the team will compare these readings to those taken before the problem occurred and look for discrepancies in code and variables to potentially find the source of the problem.
The new signal itself is the result of one of the scientists’ attempts to return the device to operation. In particular, this is a reaction to the command sent on March 1.
Due to the enormous distance, and Voyager 1 has already moved 24 billion km from the Earth, the signal travels only in one direction for almost a day. On March 7, engineers began work on decrypting the data, and on March 10 they completed this work. Perhaps in the near future scientists will be able to regain control of the legendary spacecraft.