NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth

(mashable.com)

25 points | by entryleveljobsc a day ago ago

13 comments

  • soon_to_be_sb a day ago ago

    May be it crossed into an area of space where physics is different.

    • adrian_b a day ago ago

      A big unknown planet has crossed the path between Voyager 1 and the Earth, blocking the radio signals for 2 days !

      (This is not impossible, because a planet so far away would have an extremely low angular velocity, so an occultation could take so long even for a not very big planet.)

      • soon_to_be_sb 14 hours ago ago

        If we are speculating, why be so uninteresting?

    • hyperhello a day ago ago

      Maybe it was waiting to go through the inter-solar customs line to get out.

    • xeonmc a day ago ago

      Maybe it has gained sentience on its own and is trying to awaken other space probes.

  • tobadzistsini a day ago ago

    "Mysteriously". The gadget is pushing fifty with vintage hardware in a hostile environment. One could say a 90 year old grandma was asleep, presumed dead, and when the paramedics showed she woke up with, "What's all the fuss?"

    • snailmailman a day ago ago

      At the same time, every component and line of code is known. Presumably they can simulate and test for all sorts of crazy exotic problems and error cases. It’s surprising that they’ve hit a new type of problem.

  • michelb a day ago ago

    Could it have crashed into something? I find it incredible that that hadn’t happened yet.

    • thomascountz a day ago ago

      On the one hand, it has crashed into a lot of somethings—like cosmic radiation and micrometeorites. On the other hand, there is a lot of space in space, and the chances of Voyager crashing into something of the same or larger scale as itself is infinitesimal.

    • adrian_b a day ago ago

      Whatever happened, it was temporary, because radio contact was established again after a 2-day pause.

    • Shawnj2 a day ago ago

      If it did crash into anything probably like a grain or sand or something stupid like that.

  • chiengineer3 a day ago ago

    I hope it's not because I used chatgpt to find signals outside of the internet and it successfully connected to voyager 1 somehow lmao

  • asanineassasin a day ago ago

    [dead]