this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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Voyager 1 contact restored

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[–] Pandantic@midwest.social 35 points 1 year ago (17 children)

I was hoping they would say in this article what they did to fix it!

[–] lechatron@lemmy.today 104 points 1 year ago (14 children)

The actual news release has a bit more information.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

Source: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth

[–] lledrtx@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Wait how did they do all that WITHOUT contact?

[–] histic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Im guessing it could still listen just not talk back

Edit read the article

Although the radio signal from the spacecraft had never ceased its connection to ground control operators on Earth during the computer problem, that signal had not carried any usable data since

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