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IT left Earth 33 years ago, now it's claimed the Voyager 2 spacecraft may have been hijacked by aliens after sending back data messages NASA scientists can't decode.
NASA installed a 12-inch disk containing music and greetings in 55 languages in case intelligent extraterrestrial life ever found it.
But now the spacecraft is sending back what sounds like an answer: Signals in an unknown data format!
The best scientific minds have so far not been able to decipher the strange information – is it a secret message?
Alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf said:"It seems almost as if someone ha
Voyager 1 is 10.5 billion miles from Earth and in about five years is expected to pass through the heliosphere, a bubble the sun creates around the solar system, and enter interstellar space.
Originally posted by David_Reale
reply to post by tothetenthpower
My coolness radar just went crazy.
It reminds me of the old 1997 movie...ugh, what's it called? Contact, or something like that. About SETI receiving a signal from aliens, a signal that is later translated into a picture - of Hitler.
Interesting, and cool, either way. Nice find, OP.
Edit to add: The movie is called Contact, and stars Jodi Foster and Matthew McConnaughey.
[edit on 12-5-2010 by David_Reale]
Originally posted by UberL33t
reply to post by Pauligirl
in a changed format that mission managers could not decode
But everything is fine they say. "Everything is fine...nothing to see etc. etc....."
Funny how a pre-programmed piece of equipment is all of a sudden returning un-decodable data.
In an interview Monday, Voyager project scientist Ed Stone said the most likely cause of the hiccup is a bit flip, where parts of a stream of data are improperly formatted. There are "probably one or two bits which have been flipped from a 0 to 1 or 1 to 0, and that affects only the science mode data," Stone told Spaceflight Now. Officials expect to receive more data on Thursday or Friday indicating whether the issue is a simple bit flip or a more serious software upset. "We will be sending a command to the spacecraft to transmit down bit by bit so we can look at it and determine which bit has been flipped, and then reset it to its proper state," Stone said. Stone said even if the anomaly is a fundamental software error, engineers can develop a software patch to uplink to Voyager 2 that should resolve the problem. Voyager 2's distance from Earth could complicate repairs. It takes nearly 13 hours for radio signals to travel each way between ground controllers and the spacecraft.