The agency reported back in April that the spacecraft appeared to be back online after a months-long disruption — and communication appears to remain solid, with all four connections repaired…
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltechthat the spacecraft appeared to be back online — and the communication appears to remain solid. On May 19, JPL announced that they were receiving science data from two of the four instruments aboard the 46-year-old spacecraft. On June 13, JPL said that all four instruments were functioning.
At Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, months of concern and intense troubleshooting resulted from the spacecraft going off-line. After losing contact with the space probe in November, the team back in March received the first signs of Voyager 1 being back online in five months. It took some clever computer engineering and an ongoing emergency operation from 15 million miles away.
However, the fact that the ever dependable Voyager, now years past its expected useful life, was still operating gave the team enough hope to attempt what would essentially be brain surgery on the space probe to get it communicating properly again. It took nearly a day for NASA’s radio signals to reach the probe and another day to hear back while scientists listened intently for a message from deep space, but finally they heard a familiar response.“We never know for sure what’s going to happen with the Voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going,” Voyager Project Manager Suzanne Dodd said in a statement.
Before they ever got to interstellar space, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.
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