Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA Finds Cause of Voyager 2 Glitch

Posted by kdawson on from the blame-cosmic-rays dept.

astroengine writes "Earlier this month, engineers suspended Voyager 2's science measurements because of an unexpected problem in its communications stream. A glitch in the flight data system, which formats information for radioing to Earth, was believed to be the problem. Now NASA has found the cause of the issue: it was a single memory bit that had erroneously flipped from a 0 to a 1. The cause of the error is yet to be understood, but NASA plans to reset Voyager's memory tomorrow, clearing the error."

4 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Really? by pclminion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let me guess: cosmic ray. Is it really that hard? What else causes a single bit-flip error in space?

    When you have a probe billions of miles from Earth, with no hope of ever physically retrieving it, and something weird happens, I don't think the first thing you do is start making assumptions.

  2. Re:So.... reboot? by Brett+Buck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why don't they just always try that first?

            Because sometimes it doesn't come back on again.

          Brett

  3. Hero by LoudMusic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    NASA is my hero. They do cool shit all the time. Even when their stuff breaks, it's cool. Then they fix it and it's even more cool.

    --
    No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
  4. Re:Just incredible! by Hurricane78 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    tubes had that nice desirable sweet distortion...

    There, fixed that for ya...

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.