Voyager spacecraft – NASATwo months after NASA crews reestablished diagnostic communications with Voyager 1, they just recently received scientific observational data as well.
Transmitted via the last remaining instruments still operational aboard the furthest man-made object from Earth, the data provides critical observations on plasma and magnetism in interstellar space.
It’s been 46 years and 7 months since Voyager 1 left Earth, and 11 years and 8 months since it bade Pluto farewell and left our solar system. It’s currently 15 billion miles, or 24 billion kilometers from Earth.
GNN reported that in March 2024, mission control for Voyager 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Technical Institute, managed to hone in on the issue that was preventing two-way communication with the probe.
After diagnosing and fixing this issue by dividing corrupted computer code into short sections and storing them in different places on the probe’s flight data subsystem before ensuring the onboard computer could find them again, JPL once again issued commands to restart sending scientific data on May 19th.
Two of the four science instruments returned to their normal operating modes immediately. Two other instruments required some additional work, but now, all four are returning usable science data.
The four instruments study plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft to directly sample interstellar space, which is the region outside the heliosphere — the protective bubble of magnetic fields and solar wind created by the Sun.
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“We never know for sure what’s going to happen with the Voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going,” Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager, told CNN in April.
In as little as one year or perhaps just a little longer, some of these four instruments will have to be powered because of the drain on the probe’s battery. By 2036, the probe will depart the Deep Space Network and be beyond all communications, carrying the Golden Record out into the unknown.
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