How NASA re-established contact with Earth's most distant space probe

How NASA re-established contact with Earth’s most distant space probe

For the first time in five months, the US space agency has been able to re-establish contact with Voyager 1, in order to check its state of repair. Once fixed, despite its age and distance, the furthest probe from Earth may still have much to teach NASA’s scientists.

Artist’s impression of the Voyager 1 probe

(Copyright: Courtesy of NASA / JPL-Caltech)

The Voyager 1 probe recently sent back usable data on the status of its onboard technical systems for the first time since November 2023. NASA engineers now hope that the probe will be able to resume communicating scientific data. For this to happen, however, someremote maintenance operationswill need to be carried out.

This lengthy interruption was caused by a problem with one of the probe’s three on-board computers, relating to flight data, and more precisely, to a faulty memory storage chip. Since this chip obviously couldn’t be repaired, it was necessary to find an alternative way of communicating with Voyager 1 again. As a result, a decision was made to transfer the affected software code to other sections of the system’s memory, which were still intact. This was sent to its new locations in the form of a radio signal, an operation that took almost a whole day to reach the probe. This operation enabled the probe to send data back to Earth. The entire restoration of the lost data is expected to take several weeks, after which the probe should once again be able to transmit scientific data from its current environment.

NASA points out that time is running out for Voyager 1, which is now just over 24 billion kilometers from Earth. Still, for as long as it has fuel left, and can maintain communications, the information gathered by the probe will remain valuable.

Meanwhile, Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. These twin probes were launched in 1977. They are now the oldest and most distant spacecraft in history.

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