This illustration provided by NASA depicts Voyager 1. The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data in November 2023. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the trouble. In mid-April 2024, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory declared success after receiving good engineering updates. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data.
NASA has reestablished contact with Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from Earth, resolving communication issues that arose last November. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California overcame a faulty computer chip and reprogrammed the spacecraft, enabling successful engineering updates. Efforts are ongoing to restore science data transmission.
Voyager 1, launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn, has been journeying through interstellar space since 2012. Despite being over 15 billion miles away, contact was maintained throughout the ordeal, akin to a phone call with one-way audio. Its counterpart, Voyager 2, continues its mission 12.6 billion miles from Earth.
