Voyager 1 Faces Transmission Challenges: Suspected Spacecraft Crack

 Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977. Its primary mission was to study the outer Solar System and beyond. Voyager 1 has provided valuable data about Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons, conducting close flybys of these planets. It is the farthest human-made object from Earth and has entered interstellar space, making it the first spacecraft to do so. Voyager 1 carries a Golden Record with greetings, sounds, and images from Earth, intended to be a message to any extraterrestrial intelligence it might encounter. Despite its age, Voyager 1 continues to communicate with Earth, sending back data from the distant reaches of our solar system.

     

           Since its launch in 1977, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe has started transmitting perplexing data to Earth. Despite its initial five-year mission to pass by Jupiter and Saturn, the spacecraft, now over five decades in space, is encountering a communication glitch after traversing billions of miles. Surprisingly, Voyager 1 has continued its journey deeper into space for the past 46 years, becoming, according to the BBC, the first human-made object to exit the solar system.

As of 2023, the signal from Voyager 1 takes over 22 hours on average to reach Earth. NASA reports that the probe, currently positioned 15 billion miles away, is facing communication issues.

NASA decodes transmitted data from the probe using binary code, a language consisting of zeroes and ones to represent letters, numbers, and symbols. This binary system, named for its reliance on two characters, is experiencing a notable problem: the probe consistently sends the same code snippet, raising concerns among scientists about a potential spacecraft malfunction.