The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Voyager 1 has finally contacted earth from 24 billion kilometres distance, interstellar space.
According to Science Alert, Voyager 1 is the most distant spacecraft from Earth. After half a year of spewing gobbledegook, it is once again back on the deep space radio network.
NASA posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) on June 15, “We're back, baby! Our Voyager 1 spacecraft is conducting normal science operations for the first time since November 2023. All four instruments, which study plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles, are returning usable science data."
The 46-year-old probe, for the first time in months, has shared that it is probing outside the influence of the Sun on the near-freezing borderlands of our Solar System.
Earlier in November 2023, the probe started sending random readouts that scientists could not understand.
Later, it was discovered that the issue was in a small corrupted chip in Voyage 1’s onboard memory chip, likely caused by old age or triggered by energetic particles in interstellar space.
The official account of Voyager 1 explained on X, “Kinda like when your power goes out, and you have to go around your whole house resetting all your electronics… That's basically what my team and I are doing now.”
However, now, after the restoration of contact with Voyager 1, it can once again send usable data to Earth.
