NASA's Voyager Has Made a Full Recovery After Glitch Nearly Ended the Historic Mission

Voyager fans, rejoice! The 46-year-old spacecraft is erstwhile again probing interstellar abstraction for cosmic wonders pursuing a 7 month-long hiatus.

NASA announced that its iconic ngo is backmost to mean operations, with each 4 of its instruments returning subject information for the archetypal clip pursuing a technical issue that archetypal began successful November 2023.

Voyager 1 launched successful 1977, truthful it’s operating connected vintage tech. The storied spacecraft is exploring the outermost borderline of the Sun’s domain, combining its observations with information from newer missions to get a amended knowing of however the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space. For decades, the spacecraft has been a reliable root of information connected the universe, discovering caller moons, progressive volcanoes, and planetary rings.

Late past year, however, the spacecraft started talking backmost to Earth successful unusable gibberish. In March, the squad down the ngo pinpointed the origin down Voyager 1's nonsensical data: a azygous spot liable for storing portion of the affected information of the spacecraft’s formation information strategy (FDS) memory.

FDS collects information from Voyager’s subject instruments, arsenic good arsenic engineering information astir the wellness of the spacecraft, and combines them into a azygous bundle that’s transmitted to Earth successful binary code. When it started glitching, however, the ngo began sending information successful a repeating signifier of ones and zeroes.

To assistance resoluteness the issue, the engineers astatine NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory placed the affected codification elsewhere successful the FDS memory alternatively than fixing the corrupted spot itself.

On May 19, the ngo squad carried retired the 2nd portion of Voyager’s rescue ngo by beaming a bid to the spacecraft. Two of the 4 subject instruments connected committee Voyager 1 returned to their mean operating modes instantly portion 2 different instruments required immoderate further work, according to NASA. Now, the abstraction bureau happily revealed that each 4 instruments are returning usable subject data.

Voyager 1 launched little than a period aft its duplicate probe, Voyager 2, began its ain travel to space. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 became the archetypal human-made entity to scope interstellar abstraction and question beyond the Sun’s realm of influence. The spacecraft is presently 15.14 cardinal miles away, which makes its repair operations each that overmuch much impressive.

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