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The Amazing Resurrection of Voyager 1 [1]

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Date: 2024-06-15  

Back in February I reported on what appeared to be the sad demise of Earth's most distant interstellar spacecraft, Voyager 1, due to a computer glitch that rendered all the data it was collecting after November last year from beyond our solar system as so much useless noise.

Then in March, after heroic efforts by the NASA/JPL legacy team to reboot a half-century old onboard computer from a distance of 15 billion miles, we had our first glimmer that we might yet still be able to reestablish contact with our interstellar emissary.

Now I'm happy to report via physics.org that Voyager 1 is once again fully functional:

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is conducting normal science operations for the first time following a technical issue that arose in November 2023. The team partially resolved the issue in April when they prompted the spacecraft to begin returning engineering data, which includes information about the health and status of the spacecraft. On May 19, the mission team executed the second step of that repair process and beamed a command to the spacecraft to begin returning science data. Two of the four science instruments returned to their normal operating modes immediately. Two other instruments required some additional work, but now, all four are returning usable science data. The four instruments study plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft to directly sample interstellar space, which is the region outside the heliosphere—the protective bubble of magnetic fields and solar wind created by the sun.

Bravo for the team that never gave up in their quest to bring Voyager 1 back from the dead!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/15/2246787/-The-Amazing-Resurrection-of-Voyager-1?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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