Voyager 1 Is Sending Back Weird Data From Interstellar Space, Here's Probably Why

is something really strange going on in Voyager 1 is it sending weird data is it actually detecting something really unusual is there a mysterious issue is there a glitch is it sending impossible data Maybe it's sending some strange signals as CNN implied yeah it's one of those weeks again a lot of attention in grabbing titles trying to make a big deal out of pretty much nothing how wonderful person this is Anton and some of you requested I decided to finally talk about what's happening with voyager 1. the incredible NASA probe that's currently traveling in the interstellar space although a much better way of imagining where it's actually located is by looking at the Universe Sandbox in order to see its location in the solar system along with the Voyager 2craft that's somewhere right there and seeing where it's actually headed so it's basically going that way and that way is pretty much nothing we'll actually discuss some of the objects is going to be passing in a few minutes but first so let's get to the point what is happening with Voyager 1 and is it really sending some series signals well to some extent yes but it's actually expected for one simple reason this mission is ancient it was launched on this rocket back in 1977. making this robe almost 45 years old that is insanely old in terms of space technology and on top of this is traveling through some relatively dangerous and somewhat radioactive conditions with quite a lot of Galactic cosmic rays coming from every direction and that's because back in 2012 and for Voyager 2 it was 2018 both probes entered what's known as Interstellar space outside of the so-called Helio sheath or solar bubble and so now they're no longer protected by the sun's magnetosphere and instead are bombarded by all kinds of interstellar radiation from every direction naturally with time this can cause serious problems and for Voyager 1 it's been in these conditions for practically 10 years now but a few weeks ago the scientists at Nasa started to get unusual signals from a system known as aacs attitude and articulation control subsystem it's actually not just one instrument it's several instruments responsible for keeping the radio antenna pointed toward Earth in order to have stable communication but it does involve 16 hydrazine thrusters three axis stabilization gyroscopes and several referencing instruments along with several redundant and backup instruments with the sole purpose of essentially keeping the probe oriented in a certain direction and here the scientists are usually aware when it's misaligned if the signal coming from the probe suddenly weakens it means that the antenna is not pointed in the right direction but in the last few years nothing like this has happened and the signals have been consistently pretty strong which means that it's not really misaligned yet it is sending the signals from the subsystem suggesting that it's sort of having problems with orientation in other words there's a bit of a disconnect between what aacs is detecting and what is actually happening with the craft but as of today everything else is operating normally the pro was receiving and sending signals and all of the commands have been so far executed and all of the science instruments are working fine as well so it's not that the system is broken it's just a Telemetry part seems to be a little bit off and that is quite possibly because of the radiation conditions that might have damaged one of the parts inside the probe and it does seem to be the case because a lot of the data that it's sending to us seems to be kind of randomly generated in other words it doesn't actually reflect what's happening on the probe right now here's actually a very beautiful image of the trajectory of the probe as it would appear in the night skies from planet Earth and as of right now nothing else has triggered any on-board full Protection Systems and everything seems to be operating normally more importantly though the signal is very strong and the antennae is pointed in the right direction and so here the scientists behind the mission highlighted that well you have to remember it's a 45 year old Mission this is sort of expected and the scientists have also announced officially that by 2025 it's very likely everything will completely stop after reading here the mission is most likely going to be over in approximately three years maximum and that's because it's running out of its nuclear fuel that has been powering the device for 45 years every single year the spacecraft has been losing approximately 4 watts of electrical power and by 2025 there's just not going to be enough energy produced by this to successfully continue the mission past the date here's actually a gorgeous picture of Jupiter's Great Red Spot taken by the probe back in the 70s not to mention that both Voyager Pros have been doing a huge overtime and were never meant to operate this long the mission actually ended back in the 90s but it's been going strong for 30 more years after that here's a beautiful picture of mimas one of the moons of Saturn and the picture of Saturn itself and so the combination of the age of the mission mixed with the high radiation environments that the probes have been pretty much flying through for the past few years makes this an extremely challenging experience for any kind of technology and so it's actually really surprising that more things have not happened just yet and on top of this this is not even the first time the probe is having some issues back in 2017 so approximately five years ago it started to experience a slight loss in the signal which the scientists determined was very likely due to the problems in its main thrusters in other words the thrusters responsible for maintaining the positioning here were no longer operating normally but because there are 16 thrusters on the probe the scientists had some backups I don't actually see them in this particular model but they are somewhere there and so the scientists did decide to switch to backup thrusters that haven't functioned for 37 years they were actually only used once in order to change the voyager's trajectory as it was leaving the solar system and turned out that everything worked as it was supposed to and since then for five years nothing major has occurred on a probe and also unlike Voyager 1 probe Voyager 2 hasn't really experienced any major problems at all all the chances are it might because it actually took at least five years for the Voyager 1 to start experiencing the interstellar space Voyager 2 only entered the interstellar space back in 2018 so it's only been four years now and that's actually why even today these two missions are so crucial to us these are the only two spacecrafts we have that are flying through the interstellar space with actual functioning scientific instruments that are currently returning a lot of data to NASA and to a lot of scientists on planet Earth and there are 5 different instruments currently actively doing a lot of science we have magnetic field investigation low energy charge particle investigation cosmic ray investigation plasma wave investigation and even the ultraviolet spectrometer that is only active on Voyager 1 and plasma investigator that's only active on Voyager 2. and so for the next three years at least until 2025 they will all have just enough power to collect and return data from the craft but by 2025 the scientists will most likely start turning some of them off and very likely most of them because there's just not going to be enough power there's actually this article from NASA published back in 2019 that talks a little bit more about what devices were turned off already and why they were turned off first specifically they actually turned off the heater but even without the heater everything seems to be operating just fine you can find this article in the description below but what's absolutely insane about NASA's engineering and of course the mission itself is that the scientists currently think that it might be possible to somehow operate some of these instruments past 2025 and possibly even until early 2030s when the other problem is going to be the distance at this point the probes are going to be too far away for the NASA's deep space Network to actually be able to communicate with them and so after 2036 it's definitely Mission over but even right now at a distance of just over 155 astronomical units away from the Sun and from planet Earth the probes are still able to communicate quite effectively even though it takes approximately 2 days for the signal to reach and return from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. and that's of course because the light travels approximately 21 hours before it can the pro but while it's still functioning and while it's still collecting data it's definitely going to teach you so much about the interstellar space and the region around the Sun that we know so little about making both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 some of the most important space missions ever with an absolutely incredible record of science but to put things in a perspective they're still really close to everything in the solar system and still far away from everything outside of the solar system they're actually only going to reach overcloud in about 300 years from now and strangely enough it will take them approximately 30 000 years to fly through it but after about 40 000 years the Voyager 1 probe is going to fly approximately one and a half light years away from the start you see right here one of the closer stars to us known as glisa 445 it's currently about 17 light years away from us but it's flying toward us and the warrior Pub is slowly moving away from the solar system so within 40 000 years they are going to be pretty close to one another although that gets pretty close is a bit of a relative term here and the only other star we know of that is going to pass close to within about one light year is a barely known m-type star known as qic3135-52-1 it's not really well studied and we know very little about the star but within 300 000 years it is going to approach the star within about one light year and so if anyone is living around the star they might be able to capture the golden record that's currently traveling on both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 Pros as you might already know this is the record that was created by the Sanchez back in the 70s with the participation from the iconic Carl Sagan that also includes the map to the solar system using the known pulsers not only with some other interesting stuff that you can learn more about in some of the previous videos and so in that sense well we're coming closer and closer to that end of the mission but still not there yet and when it comes to this particular anomaly currently the scientists believe that they will probably be able to find some kind of a software solution to this or possibly use one of their redundant hardware systems that is still active and still works just fine in other words even though the probe is sending strange signals they're not unexpected they are sort of a result of being old plus a result of being located in an extremely violent environment with quite a lot of radiation but I guess for now that's sort of all we know about the pros we'll definitely come back and talk more about this once there are some updates or once the pros discover something else unusual like they did a few years ago when there is a video about this on the channel that you can explore yourself for now though that's pretty much it these are super super important missions and every single year now scientists are going to be collecting even more data just to get as much as they can from them we're not going to have an Interstellar probe for a very very long time if ever and so every little bit coming from them is super important but I guess until you learn more thank you for watching subscribe maybe share this with someone who loves learn about space and Sciences and maybe come back tomorrow to learn something else support the show on patreon by joining Channel membership or by buying the wonderful person t-shirt you can find in the description they want to force you tomorrow and as always bye [Music] [Music] thank you thank you

Channel: Anton Petrov

Views: 983,487

Keywords: anton petrov, science, physics, astrophysics, astronomy, universe, whatdamath, what da math, technology, steven universe, space engine, interstellar space sounds, voyager 2, voyager 1, voyager mission, solar system edge, edge of solar system, golden record, voyager golden record, vlism, interstellar space, heliosheath, heliosphere, interstellar medium, galactic rays, cosmic rays, galactic cosmic radiation, wall of plasma, hot plasma, oort cloud, new horizons, sounds of space

Id: PI5uwMhX38Q

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022