NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is the most distant human-made object exploring interstellar space, encountered a serious glitch in November that halted its science work for months. However, in an impressive display of perseverance and ingenuity, NASA has successfully restored two of Voyager 1’s instruments and they are now sending back usable science data. The agency is currently working on recalibrating the remaining two instruments, with this process expected to be completed in the coming weeks.
Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles away from Earth, is in uncharted territory both in terms of its location and its age. It takes more than 22.5 hours for a message from Earth to reach the probe, making troubleshooting a slow process. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the solar system in 2012 when it entered interstellar space, with its twin Voyager 2 following suit in 2018. The team working on Voyager 1 is dealing with systems, technology, and documentation that are decades old, a testament to the lasting durability of the spacecraft.
The spacecraft’s plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer instrument are currently sending usable data, while work is still ongoing to fix the cosmic ray subsystem and low-energy charged particle instrument. This process may take several weeks, but the team is dedicated to restoring Voyager 1 to full science operations. After encountering garbled data in late November, the team traced the issue to a small portion of corrupted memory in the flight data subsystem. Once the source of the glitch was identified, the team was able to rework the spacecraft’s code, leading to the successful restoration of two instruments.
NASA’s efforts to repair Voyager 1 mark a major milestone in the recovery operation. The spacecraft’s continued function is seen as a small miracle, and the agency hopes to keep at least one instrument working on both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 until around 2025. Even after the science instruments are retired, the probes will continue to stay in touch with Earth for many years to come. The Golden Record aboard Voyager 1, which contains messages from Earth, provides a beacon of hope that one day intelligent life from beyond our solar system may come across it. For now, Voyager 1 is back to work and NASA is committed to utilizing the spacecraft for as long as it remains operational.
