NASA Engineers Reconnect with Voyager 1, Spacecraft Back in Touch After Five Months
Interstellar Explorer Updates NASA on Its Health
NASA's Voyager 1 probe, which has traveled billions of miles beyond the edge of our solar system, has finally re-established contact with engineers on Earth. For the first time in five months, NASA has received decipherable data from the spacecraft, thanks to a creative solution crafted by the team to fix a communication problem.
Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is the most distant spacecraft from Earth, and was the first probe to reach interstellar space. In November 2023, the spacecraft stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands.
On Saturday, April 5, Voyager 1 finally "phoned home" and updated its NASA operating team about its health. After five months of sending back corrupted data, the engineers were able to craft a solution to fix the issue and re-establish communication with the probe.
NASA says it is once again able to get meaningful information back from Voyager 1, and the team is now working to diagnose the problem that caused the communication glitch. The spacecraft is currently over 14 billion miles from Earth, and its signal takes over 20 hours to reach NASA's Deep Space Network.
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