NASA’s long-distance fix has Voyager 1 talking again

NASA’s Voyager 1 is sending back scientific data for the first time in six months after a potentially disastrous computer glitch was fixed more than 24 billion kilo­metres away on Earth.

The Voyager 1 spacecraft. Picture: NASA

NASA’s Voyager 1 is sending back scientific data for the first time in six months after a potentially disastrous computer glitch was fixed more than 24 billion kilo­metres away on Earth.

Launched in 1977 and originally designed to operate for just four years, the probe has travelled farther than any other spacecraft.

Its prospects had looked ­uncertain in November when communication links broke down. “We’d gone from having a conversation with Voyager, with the 1s and 0s containing science data, to just a dial tone,” a NASA spokeswoman said.

After months of long-distance troubleshooting – every command taking almost 23 hours to reach the probe – it began returning data about the health and ­status of its engineering systems in April. “Sounding a little more like yourself, Voyager 1,” NASA announced at the time. Now it has gone a step further, resuming its normal science operations.

Voyager 1 and its sister Voyager 2, which was also launched in the summer of 1977, are the longest-serving spacecraft in history. They are also the only ones to ­directly sample interstellar space, the region outside the protective bubble of magnetic fields and solar wind created by the sun.

Voyager 1’s four instruments study plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles. Its computers, once top of the range, have about as much memory as a modern car-key fob. And as its supply of nuclear fuel runs down, further glitches are expected. “While Voyager 1 is back to conducting science, additional minor work is needed,” said NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory. “Among other tasks, engineers will resynchronise timekeeping software in the spacecraft’s three onboard computers so they can execute commands at the right time. The team will also perform maintenance on the digital tape recorder, which records some data for the plasma wave instrument that is sent to Earth twice per year.”

NASA was able to track the fault that struck in November to a chip in one of Voyager 1’s computers. The chip was unrepairable, forcing engineers to ­devise a workaround. Software was rewritten and relocated to other areas of the computer’s memory via a radio signal sent on April 18.

When Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, Malcolm Fraser was in his first term as Australia’s prime minister, Jimmy Carter was in the first year of his US presidency and Queen Elizabeth was celebrating her silver jubilee.

The Times