NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped sending readable scientific and technical data back to Earth on November 14, 2023.
Now, for the first time since November, it is sending actionable data about the status of its on-board engineering systems to a control center on Earth. The next step is to allow the probe to start sending scientific data again, as NASA writes on its own website.
The problem was the chip
The Voyager 1 probe, sent into space almost half a century ago, was apparently still able to receive instructions from NASA teams during its “silence” and apparently functioned normally, but it did not send back scientific data or information about its technical condition.
Astronomers have shown the true color of the planets Uranus and Neptune
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According to NASA’s California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the problem was a chip in one of the onboard computers that is in charge of formatting scientific and technical data before sending it to Earth.
The chip could not be repaired, but the programmers managed to move the code in question from Earth to another location in the memory of the respective computer. NASA noted that the signal takes 22.5 hours to reach Voyager 1 and another 22.5 hours to return.
Loss of contact with Voyager 2 as well
Voyager 1 is the most distant human object in space. It was launched together with the Voyager 2 probe in 1977, originally both were supposed to explore the four gas giants of our Solar System: Jupiter Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. But they managed to continue even further and are now beyond the outer boundary of the heliosphere in interstellar space.
It is worth reminding that NASA also lost contact with the “two” last July. It was then possible to fully re-establish contact with the Voyager 2 probe in August. Why did the short-term loss of contact last August occur? The control center accidentally sent the wrong command, because of this the antenna of the probe moved – and the device went silent.
NASA is already communicating normally with the Voyager probe, the antenna is in the correct position
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