NASA has revealed it's received data from Voyager 1 for the first time in five months.
Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 - the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space - first began their journey in late 1977, however 46 years later, Voyager 1 stopped sending 'readable' data back to Earth.
The Voyager program
Voyager 1 was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977 - 16 days after its twin Voyager 2.
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The unmanned device is part of the Voyager program studying Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings, and the larger moons of the two planets.
The device was only designed to last five years so it's continued to give us insights into space beyond its original completed mission, having also studied the outer Solar System and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere.
But on November 14 2023, an issue arose for the program. Despite still receiving commands from those down on Earth, Voyager 1 stopped sending 'readable science and engineering data' back.
The issue
Given the fact Voyager 1 is currently about 15 billion miles away from Earth, finding the root cause of the issue from such a distance could have proven tricky.
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Alas, last month, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California pinpointed what the issue was.
It was determined Voyager 1's three onboard computers known as the flight data subsystem (FDS) - responsible for 'packaging the science and engineering data' before it gets sent to Earth - were malfunctioning in some way.
NASA's team later discovered the root cause of the problem was a single chip in the FDS - which stored some of the FDS' memory alongside software code which helped package the data and make it readable to the team back on Earth.
Sadly, the chip couldn't be repaired.
The solution
So, the Voyager engineering team divided the software code which had been stored on the chip into smaller sections.
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They then placed those smaller groups of code onto the FDS spread out in different locations, adapting parts of the code as they went to make sure they'd all still work together despite now being located in different areas.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains: "The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18.
"A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth."
Thankfully, NASA revealed on Monday (April 22), that Voyager 1 has since resumed sending engineering updates to Earth, the team having heard back from the spacecraft on April 20 meaning the modification to the FDS and its code had been successful.
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They could now check the 'health and status' of Voyager 1 - something they hadn't been able to do in five months.
NASA explained: "During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data."
Thankfully, Voyager 2 continues to run as normal.
Topics: NASA, Science, Space, Technology