After months of troubleshooting, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has successfully reconnected with Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth. The spacecraft has been experiencing communication issues since November due to a malfunction in its flight data subsystem, but engineers have managed to restore contact by rerouting code within the system. Voyager 1 is now sending back usable data about its health and status, allowing scientists to continue their research on interstellar space. The spacecraft’s return to communication is a testament to the ingenuity and dedication of the JPL team, and highlights the importance of these historic spacecraft in our exploration of the cosmos.
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NASA has successfully reestablished communication with Voyager 1, the spacecraft that has traveled the farthest from Earth and has been exploring interstellar space since 2012. Voyager 1 had previously stopped transmitting understandable data, but engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have resolved the issue by reconfiguring the spacecraft’s coding. The team is still working on restoring the transmission of scientific data from Voyager 1, but they have declared the initial communication restoration a success. Voyager 1 and its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, were launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn. While Voyager 2 is still working and located 12.6 billion miles away, Voyager 1 is now more than 15 billion miles away, taking over 22 hours for signals to reach it due to its immense distance.
In a major breakthrough, NASA engineers have successfully reestablished communication with Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth. This 46-year-old probe, currently over 15 billion miles away, has resumed transmitting intelligible data after experiencing issues with one of its onboard computers since December. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team was able to remotely relocate the corrupted code, despite the outdated technology of the spacecraft. This successful repair highlights NASA’s ongoing relevance and expertise in space exploration, even as Elon Musk’s SpaceX emerges as a viable option for human spaceflight.
Voyager 1, one of NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft launched in the 1970s, has been experiencing communications issues since November 2023. The problem was traced to a failed chip in the onboard flight data system (FDS), which is responsible for packaging and relaying data back to Earth. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed a workaround to route data around the compromised chip. On April 18, the first portion of the new code was sent to Voyager 1, and on April 20, the team received health and status information from the spacecraft for the first time since November. The team will continue sending software updates to address the FDS issue and hopes to regain access to science data soon.