In November, NASA’s Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from Earth, experienced a computer problem that halted its transmission of science data. However, this week, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that the spacecraft’s four instruments are back in operation and resuming their studies. The team recently received meaningful information from Voyager 1 in April and has now commanded it to start studying its environment once again.
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and is currently drifting through interstellar space, which is the space between star systems. Prior to reaching this region, the spacecraft made important discoveries such as finding a thin ring around Jupiter and studying several of Saturn’s moons. Its instruments are specifically designed to collect data on plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles.
Currently, Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles from Earth while its twin Voyager 2 is also in interstellar space and located more than 12 billion miles away. Both spacecraft are continuing their missions to explore and study the vast expanse of space beyond our solar system.
