Voyager 1: NASA’s longest-running spacecraft back in contact with Earth after five months of silence | Science and technology news

The Voyager probes are in interstellar space, but Voyager 1 has not returned any useful information since November. After months of work, NASA scientists have now heard from the spacecraft.

NASA’s longest-running spacecraft, Voyager 1, is sending information back to Earth for the first time since November.

Scientists have managed to solve a problem with the probe, which was launched 46 years ago, after five months of silence.

On November 14 last year, Voyager 1 stopped sending usable data back to Earth, even though scientists could see that Voyager 1 was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating properly.

It was first launched alongside its twin, Voyager 2. The pair are the only spacecraft to ever fly interstellar spacewhich is the space between stars.

The Voyager probes are returning never-before-seen information about our Milky Way. Since blasting off in 1977, they have revealed details in Saturn’s rings, provided the first in-depth images of the rings of Uranus and Neptune, and discovered the rings of Jupiter.

Even though their cameras are turned off to save power and memory, they still send back information that can’t be obtained anywhere else.

Now that all this data is on board and the spacecraft is more than 15 billion miles from Earth, NASA scientists necessary to solve the problem remotely.

The team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California confirmed in March that the problem was related to one of Voyager 1’s three onboard computers. That computer, called the flight data subsystem, is responsible for packaging the data before sending it to the earth are returned.

Inside the computer, a single chip containing part of the computer’s software code stopped working. Without that code the data was unusable.

The engineers couldn’t come and fix it. Instead, on April 18, they remotely split the code across different parts of the computer.

Then they had to wait to see if their solution had worked.

It takes about 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach Voyager 1, and another 22.5 hours for a response.

On April 20, the team received good news. For the first time in five months, they regained contact with Voyager 1 and were able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

Now they will modify the rest of the computer so that it can send back more data.

Voyager 2 is operating normally and heading toward a star called Ross 248. In about 40,000 years, it will be within 1.7 light-years of it.

Voyager 1 will almost reach a star in the constellation Ursa Minor in 38,200 years.