CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—NASA has successfully regained contact with Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, after it stopped sending back understandable data last November. The issue was traced back to a faulty computer chip, and flight controllers were able to reconfigure the spacecraft’s coding to bypass the problem.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California announced that they received positive engineering updates late last week, marking a significant achievement. Efforts are ongoing to resume the transmission of scientific data.
It takes 22 1/2 hours for a signal to reach Voyager 1, which is located more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space. The round trip signal travel time is double that.
Although there was a period where understandable data was not being received, contact with Voyager 1 was never completely lost. A JPL spokeswoman likened the situation to a phone call with poor reception where the person on the other end cannot be heard.
Launched in 1977 for the purpose of studying Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 has been venturing into interstellar space— the region between star systems— since 2012. Its counterpart, Voyager 2, is currently 12.6 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) away and continues to operate smoothly.
By Marcia Dunn
