NASA Reconnects with Voyager 1

November 11, 2024

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NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, now 15 billion miles from Earth, reconnected with scientists after a short break in communication.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was designed to explore far-off planets but has now gone beyond our solar system, sending valuable data from a region no other human-made object has reached. Recently, NASA engineers celebrated re-establishing contact with Voyager 1 after days of silence, thanks to a backup radio system it hadn’t used since 1981.

Originally, Voyager 1’s mission was expected to last only five years, focusing on Jupiter and Saturn. However, it has operated for nearly 50 years, traveling into interstellar space in 2012 as the first object from Earth to reach this distant region. Signals from Voyager 1 now take about 23 hours to reach Earth due to the vast distance.

Voyager 1 also carries a “golden record,” a time capsule with sounds, images, and messages from Earth intended for any alien life it may encounter. The recent communication issue occurred when the flight team sent a command for Voyager 1 to activate one of its heaters, but contact unexpectedly stopped. NASA engineers guessed that Voyager’s main X-band radio transmitter had shut off, so they tried the backup S-band transmitter, which has a weaker signal. Surprisingly, this worked, and contact was re-established.

NASA scientists are now investigating the issue, hoping to keep Voyager 1 on its mission, gathering discoveries from the edge of interstellar space.

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