Saturday, March 16, 2024

Voyager 1 Starts Making Sense Again After Months of Babble

Veteran spacecraft shows signs of sanity with poke from engineers.

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... Engineers are hopeful that the veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 might have turned a corner after spending the last three months spouting gibberish at controllers.

On March 1, the Voyager team sent a command, dubbed a "poke," to get the probe's Flight Data System (FDS) to try some other sequences in its software in the hope of circumventing whatever had become corrupted.

Readers of a certain vintage will doubtless have memories of poke sheets for various 1980s games. Not that this hack ever used a poke to get infinite lives in Jet Set Willy, of course.

While Voyager 1's lifespan is not infinite, it has endured far longer than anticipated and might be about to dodge yet another bullet.

On March 3, the mission team saw something different in the stream of data returned from the spacecraft, which had been unreadable since December.

An engineer with the Deep Space Network (DSN) was able to decode it, ...


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-03-15 01:07 PM

"Poke"? Sounds abusive. Poor Voyager I. Wouldn't be surprised if he runs away from home.

#2 | Posted by sentinel at 2024-03-15 01:49 PM

Poke and peek, the good old days.

#3 | Posted by snoofy at 2024-03-15 01:56 PM

Does master and slave bring back memories?

#4 | Posted by sentinel at 2024-03-15 03:20 PM

Poke and peek, the good old days.

Shades of my VIC-20...

#5 | Posted by REDIAL at 2024-03-15 03:23 PM

It's amazing that it has survived in the cold of space this long.

#6 | Posted by Nixon at 2024-03-15 03:41 PM

@#6 ... It's amazing that it has survived in the cold of space this long. ...

Design life was, four years?


#7 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-03-15 03:50 PM

OMG! That's the alien "languages no one speaks" Trumpanzee was blabbering about!

#8 | Posted by RightisTrite at 2024-03-17 08:57 AM

Yeah I wouldn't trust it. Them illegal aliens done gone and tampered with it and poisoned it's blood.

#9 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-03-17 12:05 PM

Would that we oldsters all had a crack team of engineers working to get us working again...goodness knows I have lost my sense of humor somewhere along the way.

#10 | Posted by Hughmass at 2024-03-18 06:29 AM

"Voyager 1 Starts Making Sense Again After Months of Babble"

Finally got out of range of fox news.

#11 | Posted by bat4255 at 2024-03-18 08:21 AM

Cool. No more
Covfefe cOvfefe coVfefe covFefe covfEfe covfeFe covfefE..

#12 | Posted by YAV at 2024-03-18 09:15 AM

""Voyager 1 Starts Making Sense Again After Months of Babble"

Finally got out of range of fox news."

And the babble was somehow more coherent than anything Harris has ever said.

#13 | Posted by humtake at 2024-03-18 11:51 AM

And the babble was somehow more coherent than anything Harris has ever said.

#13 | POSTED BY HUMTAKE

You should be more respectful of your future President.

#14 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-03-18 12:01 PM

Obviously Vger is way ahead of Trumpism if it's stopped babbling.

#15 | Posted by Corky at 2024-03-18 12:05 PM

Voyager 1 Starts Making Sense Again After Months of Babble

The aliens that captured it finally deciphered how its communication protocols.

#16 | Posted by FedUpWithPols at 2024-03-18 07:55 PM

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