Voyager 1 is sending weird data back to Earth

[sprite75]

Uh-oh

Voyager 1 is nearly 14.5 billion miles from Earth and continues to hurtle out of the solar system at about 38,000 miles per hour. But NASA engineers working on the 44-year-old spacecraft have recently been vexed by the probe's articulation and control system, which is generating data that appears to be completely random.

"A mystery like this is sort of par for the course at this stage of the Voyager mission," said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager 1 and 2 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, in a NASA release.

The Voyager team continues to scrutinize the weird attitude articulation and control (AACS) data; they're not sure whether the problem comes directly from that system or another part of the spacecraft.

"The spacecraft are both almost 45 years old, which is far beyond what the mission planners anticipated. We're also in interstellar space – a high-radiation environment that no spacecraft have flown in before," Dodd added. "There are some big challenges for the engineering team. But I think if there's a way to solve this issue with the AACS, our team will find it."

We may have a problem if it starts vaporizing starships and heads back insisting carbon units provide it with information...

[Newt]

"...readouts from the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS) don't reflect what's actually happening onboard..."

I think I saw that movie.