NASA's Voyager 1 from the '70s is in trouble. Engineers are consulting a 45 year old manual to troubleshoot.

In May, NASA scientists said the Voyager 1 spacecraft was sending back inaccurate data from its attitude control system. The mysterious error is still ongoing, according to the mission’s engineering team. Now, to find a fix, engineers are digging into decades-old manuals.

Voyager 1, along with its twin Voyager 2, was launched in 1977 with a five-year design lifetime to study Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their respective moons up close.

After nearly 45 years in space, both spacecraft are still functioning. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to venture beyond the limits of our sun’s influence, known as the heliopause, and into interstellar space. It is now about 14.5 billion miles from Earth and sending data back from outside the solar system.

“No one thought it would last that long,” Suzanne Dodd, project manager for the Voyager mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Insider, adding, “And here we are.”

Voyager 1 was designed and built in the early 1970s, complicating efforts to solve the spacecraft’s problems.

Although Voyager engineers currently have some documentation – or command media, the technical term for documents containing details about the design and procedures of a spacecraft – from the early mission days, other important documents may have been lost or misplaced.

An engineer works on instruments for one of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, on November 18, 1976.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

During the first 12 years of the Voyager mission, thousands of engineers worked on the project, according to Dodd. “When they retired in the ’70s and ’80s, there wasn’t a big push to have a project document library. People would take their boxes home in their garages,” adds Dodd. In modern missions, NASA maintains a more robust record of documentation.

There are several boxes with documents and schematics stored offsite from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Dodd and other Voyager handlers can request access to these records. Still, it can be a challenge. “Getting that information requires you to find out who is working in that area on the project,” says Dodd.

For the latest Voyager 1 fault, mission engineers had to specifically look for the box under the name of the engineer who helped design the attitude control system. “It’s a time-consuming process,” said Dodd.

The spacecraft’s attitude control system, which sends telemetry data back to NASA, indicates Voyager 1’s orientation in space and keeps the plane’s high-gain antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling it to transmit data home.

“Telemetry data is basically the health status of the system,” said Dodd. But the telemetry readings the spacecraft handlers get from the system are chaotic, Dodd says, meaning they don’t know if the attitude control system is working properly.

An engineer works on the construction of a large dish Voyager high gain antenna, July 9, 1976.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

So far, Voyager engineers haven’t been able to find the root cause of the error, mainly because they haven’t been able to reset the system, Dodd said. Dodd and his team believe it’s due to aging parts. “Not everything works forever, even in space,” he said.

The Voyager fault can also be affected by its location in interstellar space. According to Dodd, the spacecraft’s data show that high-energy charged particles reside in interstellar space. “It’s unlikely that someone hit the spacecraft, but if it did, it could cause more damage to the electronics,” said Dodd, adding, “We can’t pinpoint that as the source of the anomaly, but it could be a factor.”

Despite the spacecraft’s orientation issues, it still receives and executes commands from Earth and its antennas are still pointed at us. “We haven’t seen a drop in signal strength,” Dodd said.

As part of continuous power management efforts that have stepped up in recent years, engineers have shut down non-technical systems aboard the Voyager probe, such as its science instrument heater, in the hope of keeping it on until 2030.

Voyager 1 looked back at Saturn on November 16, 1980 to provide a unique perspective on its rings.

NASA/JPL

From discovering unknown moons and rings to the first direct evidence of the heliopause, the Voyager mission has helped scientists understand the cosmos. “We want this mission to last as long as possible, because science data is invaluable,” said Dodd.

“It’s amazing that both spacecraft are still up and running — a bit of a nuisance, but operating really well and still sending back this valuable data,” Dodd said, adding, “They’re still talking to us.”

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