Reset of memory turns out to be just what the computer doctor ordered
Voyager 2 was launched 33 years ago and currently remains on course, traveling out of the solar system. It is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, passing through the heliosphere, a magnetic bubble that surrounds our solar system. It continues to transmit data, even as it passes through this volatile region.
However, three weeks ago the probe started transmitting garbled messages to Earth. NASA program administrators put the spacecraft in an engineering mode, restricting it to only sending health updates to Earth, while they diagnosed the issue.
NASA’s Voyager 2 project manager Ed Massey comments, “In some spacecraft that are closer to the sun one could think of single event upsets caused by solar activity. But we’re so far away, it’s hard to say that’s what caused it. We’re like 93, 94 AU out.”
The command to reset the probe was set on May 19, and by May 22 the probe was back in action talking to Earth in its usual fashion.
h/t dbs mod
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I’ve been waiting for an appropriate article to post this interesting interactive site.
Smokey says:
Amazing link. Thank you.
Smokey says:
June 12, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I’ve been waiting for an appropriate article to post this interesting interactive site.
Thank you. Verrrry Interesting!
Good to see the sturdy little fellow get a third wind . I would love to see some action in the Kuiper Belt.
Comment on the Daily Tech blog of the above article:
‘quote:
It’s odd that they don’t mention cosmic rays
they have stated they are not sure yet what caused the glitch. A statement from a real scientist.
Now, if they were climate “scientists” they would have stated as fact that it was the worst possible outcome and that they “know” it is so because their computer models said so. ‘
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
However, three weeks ago the probe started transmitting garbled messages to Earth. NASA program administrators put the spacecraft in an engineering mode, restricting it to only sending health updates to Earth, while they diagnosed the issue.
Now if we could do this with the whole AGW debate, turn it into engineering mode only.
Meanwhile
http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u82/Robertinjapan/voyager-tan.jpg
Damn Photobucket
http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~rjvveeke/plaatjes/voyager-tan.jpg
Try this one 🙂
Smokey says:
June 12, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I’ve been waiting for an appropriate article to post this interesting interactive site.
================================
Nice link, thanks.
I was told that the “Golden Record” on the Voyager was fabricated at the Prototype Shop at Kennedy Space Center.
Global Warming might fall into this:
‘No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crabtree's_Bludgeon
Now, this is what engineering is all about! We’ve been to the Moon 40 years ago, we can fix a Voyager so far away, but we can’t plug a hole in the bottom of the sea… Are there two types of engineers? The new and the old ones?
Ecotretas
This craft has traveled not only 93 AU in space but 33 Earth years in time. 1967! Were there people then?
Maybe some alien race tried to send it a message, and fouled it up.
At least it didn’t report back as Nomad.
Just like Windows: if in trouble, reboot ;-D
Reboot.
Hmmmm, is it running an early version of Windoze?
Yeah, I know it isn’t but just couldn’t resist.
Excellent news. This will let it keep working till the Klingons to blast it out of space for target practice as they will for Pioneer 10 (the probe wasn’t so long-lasting in its first and only movie role, Star Trek V: the Final Frontier. A trigger-happy Klingon named Captain Klaa blasted Pioneer 10 to smithereens for target practice.)
{:)}
Oh, depending on Voyager’s velocity it may be experiencing time dilation effects and while it may have traveled 33 Earth years in time it may not be that old. Anyone care to do the computations for the jump to light speed?
Seven Billion Miles and Counting….
“Pioneer 10 was only intended to last 21 months, but it’s been going for nearly 30 years.”
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast03may_1/
At its current speed, Veeger 2 will take over 96,000 years to reach the next nearest star. Hopefully by then, we will have a little better knowledge of our climate here on Earth.
John Blake says:
June 12, 2010 at 3:01 pm
This craft has traveled not only 93 AU in space but 33 Earth years in time. 1967! Were there people then?
****************************************************************************
I’m not certain, but no one was worrying about climate change then.
Good news.
NASA doing what NASA is supposed to be doing, that is.
Now, about that politically-inpired sight-seeing tour on a ship north of Alaska to generate advertising for an ice melt in the Arctic ….
Good to know V … GER will still be around when Kirk and Spock show up.
Cool link, Smokey. Thanks
Space anyone?, Electrical field?…come on! that´s not possible in a pebbles gravitational universe!
Read this, and you´ll understand:
http://www.holoscience.com/news/mystery_solved.html
A remote reset at a distance measured in Astronomical Units. Why can’t all IT help desks be this good?
It is extraordinary that in not much more than a hundred years we have gone from a short powered flight of 36 metres to sending space craft to every planet in our solar system and beyond to the boundary of outer space and our solar system. Amongst the many acheivments, We have put 12 men on the moon spread over 6 missions. 2 robot vehicles have been exploring the surface of Mars continuoulsy for 6 years (well beyond expectation). We have a satelite orbiting Saturn taking extraordinary photos of the giant planet and it’s rings and it’s many strange and exotic moons. Meanwhile we have the Hubble space telescope that brought us the 1st high definition photos of distant stars and Galaxies. And then there is the Space Shuttles that in spite of 2 dreadful disasters, it is still incredible that it can take 7 astronauts and a large payload into orbit and then come back to Earth and land just like a plane.
I think it is interesting that all this, and much more has been acheived by the much maligned ‘government sponsored scientist’, and the brand name that is on most of the above, from the one in orbit around Mecury to the 2 just leaving the Heliosphere, is NASA.
Is the achievement of all those scientists not really that good because they are ‘government’ and is that achievement even less so because of the opinions of a single man; James Hansen?
1967? Weren’t the Ice Age warnings just beginning?