NASA finally received a reasonable response from Voyager 1, the spacecraft furthest from Earth, and stopped sending back intelligible data in November 2023.
Flight controllers traced pristine communications to a faulty computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s encryption to solve the problem.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has declared a success after receiving good technical updates late last week.
ALSO READ: NASA Predicts Explosive Once-in-a-Lifetime Star Event
The research team is still working to restore scientific data transmission. It took 22 and a half hours to send the signal to Voyager 1, more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space.
POLL—Is Climate Change a Major Threat That Requires Immediate Policy Action?
Signal transmission time is twice the round trip time. A JPL spokesman said that communication was never lost; it was like making a phone call where you can’t hear the person on the other end.
Launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 has been exploring interstellar space – the space between star systems – since 2012.
ALSO READ: NASA Announces New Moon Landing Attempt With IM-1 Mission
Its twin, Voyager 2, is 12.6 billion miles (20 billion km) away and still working fine.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Education Communications Group.
You Might Also Like:
Scientists Discover Large Water Reserve in Gigantic Black Hole a Billion Times Bigger Than the Sun
NASA Announces Discovery of Potential Habitable “Super Earth”
Man Who Almost Became NASA’s First Black Astronaut in the ’60s Recounts His Experience
Texas Officials Express Concern About Solar Eclipse
SpaceX Loses Starship Over Indian Ocean Amid Moon Travel
