Nasa has announced that the cause of Voyager 1’s transmission issue was a faulty chip, for which they developed an ingenious repair method. The Voyager 1 probe, the farthest of all human-made objects sent into space, had stopped transmitting readable data in mid-November but continued to receive commands. In March, teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered the faulty chip and developed a coding solution to fix the problem within the probe’s old computer system memory limitations.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is now sending actionable information about its technical systems’ health and status back to Earth. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to transmit scientific data once again. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 became humanity’s first spacecraft to reach interstellar space in 2012 and is currently over 15 billion miles away from Earth. Messages take about 22.5 hours to reach the probe.
Voyager 2, which also left our solar system in 2018, contained a gold-plated copper plate with a map of our solar system and a radioactive clock to determine its launch date. Carl Sagan led a committee that selected the contents of the discs, which include images of life on Earth, music, and sounds. The Voyager probes are expected to continue roaming the Milky Way in silence after their power sources run out around 2025.
In conclusion, the Voyager 1 probe is back to sending data to Earth after an ingenious repair method fixed a faulty chip. The messages contained on the Voyager probes, selected by a committee led by Carl Sagan, aim to convey the story of our world to extraterrestrials and showcase life on Earth through images, music, and sounds. The probes are expected to continue their journey through silence once their power sources run out.