Is it possible that cosmic rays beyond the heliopause have damaged (bit-flipped) the radiation-hardened circuitry on board the spacecraft? That might cause it to start jibbering nonsense.
There are a number of possibilities. We likely will never know what actually happened. A bit flip would be bad, but potentially fixable. If they can somehow force a reset. It could also be simple component failure, a bad capacitor, in the wrong place, and your computer goes haywire. Ditto for mechanical damage. A grain of dust, hitting the wrong point could cause a cascade of problems.
The backup systems are long dead. The fact they’ve managed to extend the mission life by 41 years is quite incredible. It was never expected to last this long.
God speed V’ger!
That’s very likely what happened. The problem is that the control board that manages communications is so old that nobody can find any documentation on how it works, so they can’t even begin to figure out a fix.
Everyone involved with that project is also probably dead.
Everyone involved with that project is also probably dead.
Literally, the FIRST sentence of the article is talking about someone who’s been involved with Voyager I from the start. Yes, the project has outlasted many of it’s original engineers, but to say, “Everyone involved with that project is also probably dead,” for a major mission that launched 46 years ago is obviously untrue.
