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Voyager 1, launched in 1977, has overcome a recent technical glitch and restored full data transmission from its four scientific instruments after months of downtime.[1] Despite being over 24 billion km (15 billion miles) from Earth, NASA engineers managed to locate a faulty chip causing data corruption, and reconfigured the onboard software to bypass the affected memory areas.[1][5] This remarkable feat, achieved through a painstaking dialogue with the 46-year-old spacecraft, highlights the ingenuity and perseverance of the Voyager team. While cutting-edge technologies like SpaceX's Starship may capture public imagination, the plasma waves and magnetic fields studied by Voyager 1 in deep space are equally vital for advancing our scientific understanding.[1] The successful recovery of Voyager 1's operations is a testament to the enduring legacy of this pioneering mission and the dedication of its engineers, who continue to push the boundaries of space exploration. Sources [1] NASA’s Voyager 1 Restores Full Data Transmission After Months-Long Hiatus https://lnkd.in/dupj3RuT [2] Voyager-1 sends readable data again from deep space - BBC https://lnkd.in/dKsMVNdG [3] Voyager 1 sends back surprising response after 'poke' from NASA https://lnkd.in/dMitQqHS [4] Voyager 1 - NASA Blogs https://lnkd.in/dqxPek5a [5] Voyager 1 is sending data back to Earth for the first time in 5 months https://lnkd.in/dPQCja_V [6] We finally know why NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped ... https://lnkd.in/dG-7dv_d

In SciAm news today:(trimmed) July 2, 2024: Plans to dismantle the International Space Station, life experiences impact energy production in the brain, and how Hurricane Beryl turned into a monster. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor TOP STORIES End of An Era The International Space Station is beloved, an icon of scientific cooperation and achievement. It has been continuously inhabited since 2000, is spread over an area the size of a football field and weighs more than 450 tons. But NASA just awarded SpaceX a $843-million contract to design and build a new vehicle able to destroy the orbiting laboratory sometime around 2031. Why this is happening: NASA has to act(….2030, an emergency might shorten that timeline. And an “uncontrolled reentry” is out of the question for something so large and whose orbit covers land where some 90 percent of Earth’s population lives. How it works: …would be prohibitively expensive, NASA says. And the station wasn’t built to be taken apart. Unfortunately, deorbiting an object as massive and unwieldy as the ISS is tricky business. The vehicle NASA builds—which a NASA official has said will be based on the design of the Dragon capsule that ferries cargo and people to the station—will need to firmly control the facility all the way down through the tumultuous atmosphere to deposit the station in the southern Pacific Ocean. --Meghan Bartels, Senior News Writer The International Space Station photographed above Earth Beyond sheer scientific value, the ISS holds tremendous “symbolic” significance. It was built and is being maintained through global cooperation of nations with varied cultural and governance philosophies. Unlike Salyut, Skylab or Mir which were symbols of national prestige, or the Chinese station in orbit now, scutttling the ISS would send our species backwards rather than enhance the spirit of global collaboration. We should use our collective imagination to at least continue to service this unique facility till the next generation of stations become real. Otherwise we’ll be faced with the situation like the space transportation gap after we retired STS. If ISS is truly showing age and unsafe for crew, we should preserve it in a parking orbit, making it the centerpiece for a International Space Artifacts Museum that would include other historic assets like the Hubble. We proposed it in our Moon book. Though we suggested L1 as the spot for the Space Museum, we could begin to collect and mothball artifacts in a suitable Earth parking orbit until we mature more suitable transportation and propulsion systems. Good to be reminded that we dearly hold on to and cherish the continuum of civilization by preserving historic artifacts all over the globe. And in civil architecture philosophy, we also rehabilitate and service historically relevant buildings and infrastructure all over the world.

What caught my eye this week… End of ISS Since Zarya's launch in 1998, there hasn't been a day without a human in space! And it's not just one country's effort, the International Space Station (ISS) is a product of collaboration from over 15 nations. Originally, NASA thought it would only last 20 years, but here we are, 26 years later, still going strong. However, NASA is currently studying how to safely destroy the space laboratory by around 2030. The ISS never really became what some had hoped, a launching point for an expanding human presence in the solar system. But it did enable fundamental research on materials and medicine, and it helped us start to understand how space affects the human body. Destroying ISS doesn’t mean our work is over in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). NASA has already partnered with private companies to develop new, commercial space stations for research, manufacturing, and tourism. So… this is just the beginning of a new era of space exploration. Axiom Space is one of the leading companies partnered with NASA to make this happen. Axiom's got big plans, they're planning to send up Axiom Hab One in 2026, a module with crew quarters and manufacturing capabilities that'll plug into an open port on the ISS. Then the habitation, scientific, and manufacturing services. Then, research and manufacturing facility. Finally, the company intends to launch a “power thermal module” with massive solar panels, expanded life support capabilities, and payload capacity. They all run on a very tight schedule. Everything must be launched and assembled by 2030. Once it's all set, Axiom Station will break off from the ISS to become its own self-sustaining space station. Afterward, the deorbit vehicle will do its job and push the ISS into the ocean. Hydrogen trains The first hydrogen fuel cell passenger train in the United States called the FLIRT, is being tested in Colorado and will soon run on the Arrow commuter rail line in Southern California. Some see it as the future of trains, while others think it's a big, shiny distraction. Image Credit: Hazegrayart from YouTube

"Earth Just Received A Laser-Beamed Message From 16 Million Kilometers Away" | Science Nature | 07/16/2024 EXCERPT: "In a groundbreaking achievement for interstellar communication, scientists have successfully received a laser-beamed message from a spacecraft situated 16 million kilometers (about 10 million miles) away from Earth. This milestone represents a significant leap forward in our ability to communicate over vast distances in space, opening new possibilities for deep space exploration and the future of interstellar messaging. NASA and other space agencies are planning to incorporate laser communication systems into future missions. The upcoming Lunar Gateway, a space station that will orbit the Moon, is set to test advanced laser communication systems. Similarly, the Mars 2024 mission aims to use laser communication to send high-definition video feeds from the Martian surface. The successful reception of a laser-beamed message from 16 million kilometers away marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of space communication. This technological breakthrough paves the way for faster, more reliable data transmission across the solar system, enhancing our ability to explore and understand the universe. As laser communication technology continues to develop, we can look forward to a future where interstellar communication becomes a reality, bringing us closer to the stars." #NASA #LaserBeamedMessage #16MillionKilometersAway #LaserCommunicationTechnology #InterstellarCommunication

I’ve never been particularly punctual, however time in space has much higher stakes than here on Earth. If our clock is a minute off, it doesn't really impact our lives. But spacecraft functions need accuracy down to one billionth of a second or less. So NASA is working to develop new tech that can make timekeeping even more accurate. “Society requires clock synchronization for many crucial functions like power grid management, stock market openings, financial transactions, and much more... NASA uses clock synchronization to determine the position of spacecraft and set navigation parameters,” says Alejandro Rodriguez Perez, a NASA Goddard researcher. It's great to hear that NASA is finding ways to improve this, as it can allow us to improve our ability to pinpoint the location of satellites. #SpaceNews #NASA #SpaceTimekeeping

"NASA's instruments capture sharpest image of Earth's radiation belts by Patricia Talbert, NASA - From Aug. 19–20, ESA's (European Space Agency's) Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) mission made history with a daring lunar-Earth flyby and double gravity assist maneuver, a spaceflight first. As the spacecraft zipped past our moon and home planet, Juice's instruments came online for a dry run of what they'll do when they reach Jupiter. During that time, two of NASA's onboard instruments added another first to the list: capturing the sharpest-ever image of Earth's radiation belts—swaths of charged particles trapped in Earth's magnetic shield, or magnetosphere. The Jovian Energetic Neutrals and Ions (JENI) instrument, built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, on behalf of NASA, took the image as Juice soared away from Earth. What it captured is invisible to the human eye. Unlike traditional cameras that rely on light, JENI uses special sensors to capture energetic neutral atoms emitted by charged particles interacting with the extended atmospheric hydrogen gas surrounding Earth. The JENI instrument is the newest generation of this type of camera, building on the success of a similar instrument on NASA's Cassini mission that revealed the magnetospheres of Saturn and Jupiter."... Phys org Read & learn more

NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) — "First Light" 03/17/24 Will Mars colonies happen in this generation with "laser optical communication" between Earth? "Eventually, we're going to want to expand the World Wide Web across the galaxy, and NASA recently demonstrated a key piece of tech that could help, beaming messages via laser across a distance of almost 16 million kilometers (10 million miles). "That's about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth, and the accomplishment, achieved in November 2023, represented the first time that optical communications have been sent across such a distance. "Traditionally, we use radio waves to talk to distant spacecraft – but higher frequencies of light, such as near infrared, offer an increase in bandwidth and therefore a huge boost in data speed. "If we're going to eventually be able to send high-definition video messages to and from Mars without a significant delay, then this is a step towards the tech we need. #science #technology #astrophysics https://lnkd.in/eJp2wiss

NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Repairs ancient Voyager-1 (V-1) probe more than 15 billion miles away. The life of the (V1) space probe, launched 1977, has been saved again. Due to a defective chip, the artificial moon sent unusable data. NASA has solved that problem with a software update. 5 months ago, V1 started spouting gibberish. The data that the American space agency NASA received was no longer usable. The chip in the space probe had broken. But the spacecraft could still receive and execute commands. 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬 of NASA wrote a software update. That was quite a challenge because Voyager 1's systems are almost fifty years old and therefore have very limited memory. 𝘞𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘶𝘱𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘴 𝘣𝘺𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘱. V1 is now sending usable data back to Earth. The space organization has once again succeeded in extending the life of the elderly space probe. The V1 space probe is now more than 24 billion Km away from Earth. For comparison, that's almost 80 x up & down from the Earth-Sun. Light and Radio signals from Earth take more than 22.5 hrs to reach the V1. The spacecraft was launched on 05-9-'77. A few days earlier, on Aug.20, V1's brother, V2, took off. The probes are identical to each other. In fact, V1 & 2 should only last 5 years. But almost 47 years later, both space probes are still working, although the artificial satellites are suffering from age-related issues. The original mission of V1 & 2 was to make measurements of the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune. In '77 the planets were in exactly the right position so that they could all be visited. That happens once every 176 years. Among other things, new close-up photos of the planets were taken. Images of the rings around Saturn were made. V2 passed by Uranus and discovered that it had not 9, but 11 rings. 12 years after launch, in '89, V2 reached Neptune. After V2 photographed the planet, its cameras were turned off to save power. V1 took 60 more photos of the solar system in '90. The V1 was then at a distance of 6.4 billion Km from Earth. Both probes are now far outside our solar system. V1 left our solar system in Aug-2012 & V2 did the same in Nov-2018, more than 40 years after its launch. Both V1 & V2 are now floating further. In recent years, NASA has turned off heating elements and other non-essential components to stretch remaining energy supplies as long as possible. V1 & 2 are expected to lose communication with Earth sometime between 2025 & 2030. They will continue to float through the endless universe. Both V1+2 carry a Golden-Record with information about Earth in case the probes are ever found by extraterrestrial life. It contains 115 pictures, greetings in 55 languages and earthly sounds, such as the sounds of wind, rain and a human heartbeat, and it contains music, by; Beethoven, Bach & Chuck Berry.

With NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s efforts to bring humans back to the moon, effective charging infrastructure is more important than ever before. Traditional wired charging solutions do not work due to extreme temperature variations and regolith accumulation. True wireless charging can surpass these hurdles. Read our blog to learn more about our wireless charging solutions for the Moon! https://bit.ly/4dow1LI #wirelesscharging #spacetech #artemisprogram #nasa #startup

New "Technology" post from THE HILL: Five things to know about the Odysseus moon landing  A robotic lunar lander developed by Houston-based Intuitive Machines became the first private spacecraft to land on the moon Thursday. The Odysseus lunar lander’s victory was the first U.S. landing on the moon in over 50 years, and faced some difficulties in its trip to the lunar surface, with Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus calling it “a nail-biter” following the landing. Here’s five things to know about the landing: It was the first lunar landing for the U.S. in over 50 years Odysseus’s touchdown on the lunar surface marked the first lunar landing for a U.S. spacecraft in over 50 years, according to The Associated Press. The last lunar landing occurred in 1972 with the Apollo 17 mission. It was the first private spacecraft to land on the moon Odysseus became the first private spacecraft to land on the moon when it touched down Thursday. It was developed by Houston-based Intuitive Machines and is a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, featuring private contracts between the agency and U.S. companies for the delivery of materials to the moon. “Odysseus has a new home,” Intuitive Machines posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after it successfully landed. The spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center last week on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX is also a private company that works with NASA. It has goals including investigating space weather Odysseus has scientific instruments to help “perform science test technologies and demonstrate capabilities,” as NASA works on its exploration of the moon. According to NASA, while on its way to the moon, the lander’s instruments were going to assist in measuring fuel quantities and gathering data about plume-surface interactions. Now that it is on the moon, its instruments will investigate space weather and lunar surface interactions and radio astronomy, per NASA. It faced some troubles on its journey to the moon Prior to landing on the moon, Odysseus faced issues and its expected touchdown time was delayed. In the few hours before the landing, the craft’s laser navigation system failed, according to The Associated Press. Therefore, Intuitive Machines’ flight control team had to rely on an experimental NASA laser system. It will help prepare for future human exploration of the moon “@Int_Machines' uncrewed lunar lander landed at 6:23pm ET (2323 UTC), bringing NASA science to the Moon's surface,” NASA posted on X Thursday. “These instruments will prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon under #Artemis.” Under NASA’s Artemis program, humans will return to the lunar surface in 2026, with the first woman and person of color making the trip, according to the agency. https://bit.ly/3T9PG9t