When NASA Lost Contact With Voyager 1, Amateur Astronomers Answered the Call

Voyager 1 is presently exploring interstellar abstraction astatine a region of 15.5 cardinal miles (24.9 cardinal kilometers) distant from Earth. Communicating with the farthest human-made entity tin beryllium challenging, but not for a scope that’s built to perceive to little frequencies emanating from the cosmos.

A squad of amateur astronomers utilized the Dwingeloo vigor scope successful the Netherlands to person signals from Voyager 1 aft a connection glitch forced the spacecraft to trust connected a backup transmitter. Dwingeloo, built successful the 1950s, joins an elite radical of telescopes capable to observe Voyager’s faint vigor signals from heavy space, a important capableness erstwhile NASA’s antennas aren’t capable to pass with the spacecraft.

In precocious October, Voyager 1 abruptly turned disconnected 1 of its vigor transmitters, forcing the ngo squad to trust connected a backup unit—a weaker transmitter that hadn’t been utilized since 1981. Voyager’s 2nd vigor transmitter, called the S-band, transmits a overmuch fainter awesome than its X-band transmitter. The formation squad astatine NASA wasn’t definite the S-band awesome could beryllium detected, arsenic the spacecraft is overmuch farther distant contiguous than it was 43 years ago. NASA uses the Deep Space Network to pass with its spacecraft, but the planetary array of elephantine vigor antennas is optimized for higher frequence signals.

The Dwingeloo telescope, connected the different hand, is designed for observing astatine little frequencies than the 8.4 gigahertz telemetry transmitted by Voyager 1, according to the C.A. Muller Radio Astronomy Station. Dwingeloo would usually beryllium incapable to observe signals being transmitted by Voyager 1, since the mesh of the crockery is little reflective astatine higher frequencies. However, erstwhile Voyager 1 switched to a little frequency, its messages fell wrong Dwingeloo’s frequence band. Thus, the astronomers took vantage of the spacecraft’s connection glitch to perceive successful connected its faint signals to NASA.

The astronomers utilized orbital predictions of Voyager 1’s presumption successful abstraction to close for the Doppler displacement successful frequence caused by the question of Earth, arsenic good arsenic the question of the spacecraft done space. The anemic awesome was recovered live, and further investigation aboriginal confirmed that it corresponded to the presumption of Voyager 1.

Thankfully, the ngo squad astatine NASA turned Voyager 1’s X-band transmitter backmost on successful November, and is presently carrying retired a fewer remaining tasks to get the spacecraft backmost to its regular state. Fortunately, vigor telescopes similar Dwingeloo tin assistance capable successful the gaps portion NASA’s communications array has occupation reaching its spacecraft.

The iconic Voyager 1 has been feeding scientists with precious information astir the star strategy and beyond for decades. On its mode to interstellar space, the probe had adjacent encounters with Jupiter and Saturn and discovered 2 Jovian moons, Thebe and Metis, arsenic good arsenic 5 caller moons and a caller ringing called the G-ring astir Saturn.