NASA and Voyager 1 are communicating again since the most distant man-made object in the universe stopped sending available data back to the space agency about five months ago.
Voyager 1, more than 15 billion miles from Earth, stopped sending readable data to scientists on November 14, 2023, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but mission controllers said the spacecraft The company was able to confirm that it was still receiving commands and operating as intended.
The engineering team responsible for Voyager 1, based in Southern California, investigated the problem and determined it was detected in one of the spacecraft’s three computers, called the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS). It turned out to be related.
FDS packages the data collected by the spacecraft before sending it to Earth.
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NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept of traveling through interstellar space, the space between stars, which it entered in 2012. (Credit: NASA/JPL-California Institute of Technology)
Engineers discovered that the chip that stores some of the FDS memory was defective, rendering the code unusable.
If the spacecraft were on Earth, engineers could actually go and replace the chip, but since it’s in interstellar space, engineers have no idea how to move the affected code to another location in FDS memory. I needed to find it.
The code is so large that there is no single place to store entire sections of code. The engineers then planned to split the affected code into sections and move them to different locations within FDS.
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After receiving data on Voyager 1’s health and status for the first time in five months, members of the Voyager flight team celebrated April 20 in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Credit: NASA/JPL-California Institute of Technology)
Engineers also needed to ensure that the code worked together as a whole after being moved.
Once the code was reconfigured, engineers sent the changes to FDS memory on April 18th.
The signal takes about 22.5 hours to travel through space to reach Voyager 1, and then another 22.5 hours for the signal to return to Earth.
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NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, shown here, along with its twin Voyager 2, have been exploring the solar system since 1977. (Credit: NASA/JPL-California Institute of Technology)
On April 20, the mission team received a response from Voyager 1, confirming that the modification worked. As a result, engineers can now check the health and condition of the spacecraft.
In the coming months, the team plans to move and adjust additional parts of the affected FDS software, including the part that sends science data back to mission control.
Voyager 1’s journey began in 1977 when the spacecraft and its twin, Voyager 2, launched on a journey around the solar system’s gas giants.
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After sending back dazzling postcard views of Jupiter’s giant red spot and Saturn’s glittering rings, Voyager 2 soared toward Uranus and Neptune. Meanwhile, Voyager 1 used Saturn as a gravitational slingshot to power its passage past Pluto.
