Voyager fans, rejoice! After a seven-month hiatus, the 46-year-old spacecraft is once again exploring interstellar space in search of cosmic wonders.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Announced The iconic mission has returned to normal operations, with all four instruments Technical issues It first began in November 2023.
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, so it operates on older technology. The famous spacecraft has explored the outermost edges of the heliosphere and is combining its observations with data from new missions to better understand how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space. For decades, the spacecraft has been a reliable source of data about the universe, discovering new moons, active volcanoes, and planetary rings.
But late last year, the spacecraft Talk to the Earth in an incomprehensible languageIn March, the team behind the mission Source of Voyager 1’s meaningless data identified: A single chip responsible for storing some of the affected parts of the spacecraft’s Flight Data System (FDS) memory.
The FDS collects data from Voyager’s science instruments and engineering data about the spacecraft’s status, bundles it into a package and transmits it to Earth in binary code. But when the malfunction occurred, the mission began transmitting data in a repeating pattern of 1s and 0s.
To solve this problem, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Placed the affected code elsewhere in FDS memory Rather than repairing the damaged chip itself.
On May 19, the mission team sent a command to the spacecraft to execute the second phase of the Voyager rescue mission. According to NASA, two of the four scientific instruments onboard Voyager 1 quickly returned to normal operating mode, while the other two instruments required additional work. Now, NASA is pleased to announce that all four instruments are returning usable scientific data.
Voyager 1 launched less than a month after its twin probe, Voyager 2, began its journey into space. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 reached interstellar space, becoming the first man-made object to travel beyond the Sun’s range of influence. The spacecraft is now 15.14 billion miles away, making its restoration all the more impressive.
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