NASA's Voyager 1 returns intelligible signal for 1st time in months

By Necva Tastan

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Voyager 1 space probe transmitted an understandable message to Earth for the first time in months after NASA engineers fixed a communication problem in the 47-year-old satellite, the US space agency announced Tuesday.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 has been continuing its mission in deep space as the farthest human-made object from the Earth at 24.1 billion kilometers (over 14.9 billion miles) from the Earth, has once again transmitted "usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems," NASA said in a statement.

Voyager 1 had been returning unintelligible signals to Earth since Nov. 14, 2023, however remaining operational and responsive to commands from mission controllers.

"The source of the issue appears to be with one of three onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it's sent to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit," it added.

Due to its interstellar position, it takes signals from Voyager 1 20 hours and 33 minutes to reach our planet, resulting in a nearly two-day round trip for messages between it and NASA.

Meanwhile, the space agency is attempting to regain a signal from the Voyager 2 spacecraft after losing communication after sending an incorrect command.