CNN: Voyager 1 overcomes its latest challenge to keep operating more than 15 billion miles away [View all]

[Dennis Donovan]

CNN - Voyager 1 overcomes its latest challenge to keep operating more than 15 billion miles away

By Ashley Strickland, CNN

Published 6:28 PM EST, Tue December 3, 2024



(CNN) -
NASA engineers have successfully restored contact with Voyager 1 and the spacecraft is operating normally after its dwindling power supply caused a weekslong blackout.

The issue began in October when the aging probe automatically switched from its primary X-band radio transmitter and began relying on a much weaker S-band radio transmitter to communicate with its mission team on Earth. The farthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1 is currently exploring uncharted territory about 15.4 billion miles (24.9 billion kilometers) away.

The probe autonomously made the transmitter swap when its computer determined that Voyager I had too little power after the mission team sent a command to turn on one of its heaters.

The unexpected change prevented engineers from being able to receive information about Voyager 1’s status, as well as the scientific data collected by the spacecraft’s instruments, for nearly a month.

After some clever problem-solving, the team was able to switch Voyager 1 back to its X-band radio transmitter and receive its daily stream of data again starting in mid-November.

“The probes were never really designed to be operated like this and the team is learning new things day by day,” said Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in an email. “Thankfully they were able to recover from this issue and learned some things.”

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