Voyager 1 has resumed operations! NASA’s farthest spacecraft is transmitting data from its 4 instruments.

Great news, everyone!Full operating science capabilities for Voyager 1 have been restored after a technical problem was reported in November 2023.

Problems arose when the space craft could no longer communicate coherently but rather transmitted a jumbled mess instead of binary code expected by earth. It was however not very surprising given that Voyager 1 is now 46 years old, and it is over 11 billion miles away from home.

However, this issue was closely monitored by the team responsible for Voyager 1, and they made efforts to diagnose it. Thus, having identified the problem in the flight data subsystem (FDS) and finding the chip that caused the trouble, they managed to come up with a fix. Therefore Voyager 1 was able to beam back good data from all the four science instruments on the 20 th April 2024.

At the present time, less than two months later, the spacecraft is fully recovered and all the science instruments are working as designed. This achievement is a proof that the team is very persistent and knowledgeable in addressing issues associated with exploration of deep space.

Even if the Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped working finally then it could be said undoubtedly that the mission has been excellent. It started in 1977 I believe and its main objective was to study Jupiter and Saturn which it accomplished by 1980. Voyager 2, its twin, was also aimed to explore Uranus and Neptune. Still, Voyager 1 has been travelling through the interstellar space since 2012, and therefore it is gathering information about this unexplored area.

The next tasks for Voyager 1 is to optimize the spacecraft through the modification of the timekeeping software, and upkeep of the digital tape recorder, which is used to record plasma waves. It is hoped that this spacecraft will remain functional for many more years, as Voyager 1.

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