After a period of innovative troubleshooting, the mission team has achieved a significant milestone: they can now, for the first time in five months, assess the health and status of the farthest human-made object in existence.
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had been silent since November, has resumed transmitting usable data regarding its onboard engineering systems. The next objective is to facilitate the spacecraft's resumption of sending scientific data. Voyager 1 and its counterpart, Voyager 2, remain the sole spacecraft to venture into interstellar space, the vast expanse between stars.
Voyager 1 ceased sending readable scientific and engineering data back to Earth on November 14, 2023, despite indications that the spacecraft was receiving commands and functioning normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California identified the issue: a malfunction in one of the spacecraft's three onboard computers, known as the flight data subsystem (FDS), responsible for packaging data before transmission.
Upon finally receiving health and status data from Voyager 1 after five months, the Voyager flight team at JPL celebrated the achievement on April 20. They determined that a single malfunctioning chip, storing a portion of the FDS memory and software code, had caused the loss of usable data. Unable to repair the chip, the team devised a strategy to redistribute the affected code across the FDS memory.
Implementing this plan required dividing the code into sections and relocating them to different areas within the FDS memory. The team also had to ensure that the adjusted sections functioned seamlessly together and update references to the relocated code in other parts of the FDS memory.
Beginning with the engineering data packaging code, the team relocated it to a new location in the FDS memory on April 18. Communication with Voyager 1, located over 15 billion miles from Earth, involves a round-trip radio signal time of approximately 22 ½ hours. When the team received confirmation of success on April 20, they could once again monitor the spacecraft's health and status.
In the coming weeks, the team will continue to relocate and adjust other affected portions of the FDS software, including those responsible for transmitting scientific data. Meanwhile, Voyager 2 remains operational, marking over 46 years since its launch and maintaining its position as one of the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history, having explored Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune before embarking on interstellar exploration.
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