Stefan Mileschin

Might want to unite with its creator

A critical system aboard the Voyager 1 probe which was sending garbled data about its status has been fixed but engineers have fixed the issue but are still seeking the root cause.

Earlier this year, the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which keeps Voyager 1's antenna pointed at Earth, began sending rubbish information about its health and activities to mission controllers, despite operating normally.

The rest of the probe also appeared healthy as it continued to gather and return science data. The team has since located the source of the garbled information. For some reason the AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago.

Suzanne Dodd, Voyager's project manager, said that when they suspected this was the issue, they opted to try a low-risk solution: commanding the AACS to resume sending the data to the right computer.

Engineers don't yet know why the AACS started routing telemetry data to the incorrect computer, but it likely received a faulty command generated by another onboard computer which was probably just doing it for Lols.

https://fudzilla.com/news/55413-voya...-problem-fixed