NASA engineers successfully reestablished communication with Voyager 1 after seven months of silence caused by a malfunctioning computer chip, allowing the spacecraft to resume its normal scientific observations from interstellar space beyond the heliosphere.
Launched in 1977 under the leadership of Dr. Edward C. Stone, Voyager 1, faced a computer glitch in November 2022 that caused communication issues, but after months of efforts by engineers, it has been restored to full working order.
Despite its age and potential limitations, Voyager 1 continues to defy expectations, having completed its primary mission to explore the outer planets by 1980 and becoming the first human-made object to enter interstellar space in 2012, providing invaluable insights into the universe and the outermost edge of the Sun's domain.
The main mission of the Voyager probes was to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, a task they accomplished successfully, with Voyager 2 also visiting the latter two planets.
It detected unexpected phenomena like the pressure front in interstellar space and is carrying the Golden Record, a message for potential intelligent life forms curated by Carl Sagan, which includes sounds, music, and greetings in multiple languages.
It is heading towards the constellation Ophiuchus, where it will approach a star in 38,000 years, after having entered interstellar space in 2012 following its "Grand Tour" of the outer planets.
Voyager 1's four scientific instruments, which study plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles, are operational again, but the onboard computer clocks required resynchronization.
The solution to Voyager 1's issues involved tracing the problem to a specific chip and dividing its code into smaller parts, allowing its instruments to return to normal operation after the fix, and the recovery process still includes synchronizing the timekeeping software and maintaining its plasma wave instrument.
The challenge now is to maintain the scientific usefulness of Voyager 1 while it explores uncharted territory in interstellar space beyond Neptune and Pluto, where it and its twin, Voyager 2, are currently located.
While Voyager 1's nuclear generators are expected to run out around 2025, NASA is once again receiving the precious data from its mission thanks to the repair, and even if Voyager 1 were to cease functioning, it would be considered a successful mission given its remarkable achievements and longevity.
It takes almost two days to send and receive information from Voyager 1 due to its distance, as it continues to gather information about interstellar space after completing its exploration of the outer planets and discovering data about Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager-1 and its twin Voyager-2 will celebrate 47 years of service in September of this year.
Sources: The New York Times, The Verge, Popular Science, NASA, JPL, Economic Times, Associated Press, Scientific American, Gizmodo, Yahoo! News, Indian Express, CBC, Infobae, Inovacao Tecnologica.
This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.
