NASA engineers have fixed the computer fault that had stopped the spacecraft from returning readable data to Earth in November, BBC reports and adds that the Voyager is currently sending back data about the health of its onboard systems.
NASA in a statement says, “Voyager-1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems,” and adds, “The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again.”
Sounding a little more like yourself, #Voyager1.
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 22, 2024
For the first time since November, Voyager 1 is returning useable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. Next step: Enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again: https://t.co/eZyqo7uERu pic.twitter.com/6YZM33Mp48
It merits a mention here that Voyager-1 is more than 24 billion km (15 billion miles) away, so distant that its radio messages take fully 22.5 hours to reach Earth.
It was launched from Earth on September 5, 1977, a few days after the launch of its sister spacecraft Voyager 2, on a tour of the outer planets i.e. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
After accomplishing its primary goal to survey the outer planets in 1989, Voyager 1 continued its journey into space and moved beyond the heliosphere – the bubble of gas emitted by the Sun – in 2012, and is now embedded in interstellar space which contains gas, dust, and magnetic fields from other stars.
In November 2023, the aging spacecraft stopped sending data from space to Earth due to a corrupted chip that prevented it from accessing a vital segment of software code used to package information and transmit it to Earth, BBC reports.
However, NASA engineers have resolved the issue by shifting the affected code to different locations in the memory of the spacecraft’s computers, it adds.
