A NASA spacecraft that is currently outside of our solar system is still sending interesting messages back to Earth.
The fact that a spacecraft that’s so far away from us can still communicate with Earth is impressive.
Having said that, scientists are a bit concerned when it comes to the content of said messages.
And there’s a very good reason for that.
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There’s still a lot we don’t know about our solar system, and even more we don’t know about space outside it.
However, thanks to increasingly more powerful and sophisticated technology – the James Webb Telescope is a great example of that – we’re learning at a relatively fast rate.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, we’re not learning much on this occasion, because the content of these messages makes no sense.
We need some context first.
On September 5, 1977, NASA launched its Voyager 1 to explore the depths of our Solar System.
Voyager 1 is one of two spacecraft taking part in this particular mission.
Throughout its journey, Voyager 1 has been sending updates back to Earth in the form of regular radio signals.
The latest binary message, coming from 15 billion miles away, consists of 1s and 0s that form a nonsensical message.
NASA explained what’s going on, which is both bad news or good news, depending on how you want to see it.
The good news is this is basically just a technical glitch.
“The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn’t working. Engineers can’t determine with certainty what caused the issue,” NASA wrote in a statement.
However, this is also bad news, because it means that no, these messages aren’t written by Aliens.
We’re going to have to wait for the Musketeer to take us to Mars for that.
Levity aside, Voyager has been exploring space for 47 years, but that means it is equipped with 47-year-old technology.
In our universe, 47 years is nothing.
But here on Earth, when it comes to computers, 47 years is an eon.
Think about what we have now compared with 1977 – it’s like chalk and cheese.
So, the fact that this module is sending back garbled messages isn’t that much of a surprise.
