VOYAGER 1 IS IN SERIOUS TROUBLE, NASA SAYS:

Normally, the probe — which, oddly, was launched about a month after Voyager 2, making it the second of the two-craft mission to launch despite its numerical name order — sends its scientific readings about interstellar space and its engineering updates in what’s known as a “package” of easily-translatable binary code.

Over the past few months, however, the probe has been “stuck” transmitting repetitive patterns of ones and zeroes that are the binary equivalent of gobbledygook. While the Earth-bound Voyager team was able to target which instrument was behind the malfunction, they haven’t yet been able to adequately troubleshoot it back into working order.

“This past weekend the team tried to restart the FDS and return it to the state it was in before the issue began,” NASA said in the statement, “but the spacecraft still isn’t returning useable data.”

It may take the agency’s engineers “several weeks” to figure out how to fix the probe.

“Finding solutions to challenges the probes encounter often entails consulting original, decades-old documents written by engineers who didn’t anticipate the issues that are arising today,” NASA pointed out. “As a result, it takes time for the team to understand how a new command will affect the spacecraft’s operations in order to avoid unintended consequences.”

We all know that this is going to eventually end very badly: