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Voyager 2 Hijacked By Aliens
I suppose someone had to say it. Hartwig Hausdorf, a German academic, has publicly stated his belief that the Voyager 2 spacecraft has been sending strange messages because it has been hijacked by space aliens.
(V'Ger from Star Trek, The Motion Picture)
Since its launch, Voyager 2 has been sending streams of data back to Earth for study by scientists, but on April 22, 2010, that stream of information suddenly changed.Nasa claimed that a software problem with the flight data system was the cause but Mr Hausdorf believes it could be the work of aliens. This is because all other parts of the spacecraft appear to be functioning fine.
He told the German newspaper Bild: "It seems almost as if someone has reprogrammed or hijacked the probe – thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth.”
I know that Technovelgy readers would like to get some facts with their fiction, so here's what the scientists at NASA say about the anomaly:
(Voyager 2 from NASA, the Space Agency)
Engineers have shifted NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft into a mode that transmits only spacecraft health and status data while they diagnose an unexpected change in the pattern of returning data. Preliminary engineering data received on May 1 show the spacecraft is basically healthy, and that the source of the issue is the flight data system, which is responsible for formatting the data to send back to Earth. The change in the data return pattern has prevented mission managers from decoding science data.The first changes in the return of data packets from Voyager 2, which is near the edge of our solar system, appeared on April 22. Mission team members have been working to troubleshoot and resume the regular flow of science data. Because of a planned roll maneuver and moratorium on sending commands, engineers got their first chance to send commands to the spacecraft on April 30. It takes nearly 13 hours for signals to reach the spacecraft and nearly 13 hours for signals to come down to NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth.
For those of you who would like to get your science fiction straight from the source, go and rent the 1979 slow-motion classic Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which uses the identical plot device.
I can't claim that this is a prediction by sf writers, unless of course the aliens watched the movie, which was streamed into outer space when the movie was shown on broadcast TV several years later.
Via the Telegraph and, of course, NASA: Engineers Diagnosing Voyager 2 Data System .
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 5/17/2010)
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