After months of nonsensical transmissions from humanity’s most distant emissary, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally communicating intelligibly with Earth again.
Voyager 1 has been transmitting a stream of garbled nonsense since November and, early this month, OGN reported that NASA engineers thought that they had finally figured out the problem. Now it has been announced that they have indeed rectified the glitch and the remarkable spacecraft - hurtling through space more than 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth - is once again communicating intelligibly.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was only designed to last 4 years. Yet, over 40 years later, scientists are still reaping the benefits. As it is now travelled beyond Earth's solar system, it's giving scientists a glimpse at what space looks like beyond the influence of our sun.
“It’s the most serious issue we’ve had since I’ve been the project manager, and it’s scary because you lose communication with the spacecraft,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an interview with Scientific American when the team was still tracking down the issue.
Although, for now, Voyager 1 appears to be on the mend, NASA scientists know it won’t last forever. Sooner or later, a glitch they can’t fix will occur, or the spacecraft’s ever dwindling fuel supply will run out for good. Until then NASA is determined to get as much data as possible out of the venerable spacecraft.