Image: CaltechJPL/Pixabay
The possibility is on the table, although not officially. Allow us to explain. Engineers at Caltech are receiving weird telemetry data from the famous probe, now in its 44th year of space exploration. Launched back on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and regions beyond the Sun's heliosphere, the spacecraft is now sending random signals about its guidance system that are not making any sense.
Voyager's attitude articulation and control system, or AACS, is responsible for keeping the probe's high-gain antenna pointing at a patch in the sky where the Earth is supposed to be at any given time so it can transmit all the data it is collecting from the interstellar medium. This marvel of engineering, almost half a century old, can predict with astonishing precision the future location of our planet in its orbit around the sun and send out a signal stream directly to our receivers.
Although there is no apparent critical malfunction with the spacecraft per se, scientists fear the onboard fault protection systems - which are designed to put the spacecraft into "safe mode" - could be triggered at any moment. As the engineering team responsible for Voyager's operations scrambles to find a solution, rumors are beginning to circulate about a possible "extraterrestrial" interference at play. Are UFOs messing with Voyager? Maybe. But they will never tell us.
Engineers Investigating NASA’s Voyager 1 Telemetry Data
While the spacecraft continues to return science data and otherwise operate as normal, the mission team is searching for the source of a system data issue.
www.jpl.nasa.gov