NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is fully operational once more, with all four science instruments returning usable data to Earth.
The problems began in November 2023, sending unintelligible data instead of its normal binary code. 46 years old it’s in uncharted territory, some 15 billion miles from Earth.
Voyager 1’s team fixed the problem in the flight data subsystem to “package” data to be sent to Earth, fixed a chip with a workaround, relocated the code in the FDS.
Voyager 1 finally sent back intelligible data on April 20, 2024 — but only from two of its four science instruments. Now, just two months later, Voyager 1’s remaining two science instruments are back up and running, communicating effectively with mission control on Earth.
Even if Voyager 1 launched in 1977, to study Jupiter and Saturn — accomplished by 1980. (Its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, went on to study Uranus and Neptune.) Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, returning crucial data.
The team will “touch up” the spacecraft resynchronizing its timekeeping software to execute commands at the right time, as well as performing maintenance on the digital tape recorder that measures plasma waves. https://www.space.com/voyager-1-fully-operational
