Voyager 1. — © AP
After months of ingenious work, NASA has once again managed to obtain data from Voyager 1, which launched in 1977. That’s remarkable considering the spacecraft is about 15 billion miles away and still has vastly outdated technology.
In November, NASA received the last ‘understandable’ code from the spacecraft. Since then it has only sent nonsense. Engineers have spent months restoring the connection between Earth and Voyager 1.
Voyager 1
Voyager 1 is the first man-made object to venture beyond the solar system. It is currently traveling at a speed of about 60,000 kilometers per hour, about 24 billion kilometers from Earth. This makes Voyager 1 the spaceship furthest away from Earth. The spacecraft was launched in 1977, with its main purpose being to study Jupiter and Saturn. Initially the mission would only last 5 years. Voyager 1 has now been in use for almost half a century.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced it had managed to obtain useful data on the health and status of Voyager 1’s technical systems “after some inventive detective work.” And that detective work is very remarkable, considering that Voyager 1 is so far away and is still equipped with outdated technology.
To correct the error, the scientists sent signals with instructions to the spaceship, so it could repair itself. It always takes more than 22 hours for the signals to reach the spacecraft, which also slows down the entire process.
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“The next step is to have the spacecraft return scientific data,” JPL said. Despite the error, Voyager 1 operated normally the entire time. So something just went wrong in the communication between the spaceship and Earth.
Tags: NASA reconnect spacecraft .. hovering billion miles Earth
