NASA has successfully resolved the issue with Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object in space that had stopped transmitting readable data in mid-November. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space in 2012 and its counterpart Voyager 2 also left our solar system in 2018. These probes contain gold-plated copper plates with information about Earth intended for extraterrestrial beings.
Teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory identified a faulty chip as the cause of the problem and developed an ingenious coding solution to repair it. The purpose of this repair is to enable the spacecraft to transmit scientific data once again, after which it will continue to drift silently through the Milky Way, powered by its radioisotope thermoelectric generators that are expected to run out sometime after 2025.
The content of the discs on the Voyager probes was selected by a committee led by legendary astronomer Carl Sagan. The contents include a map of our solar system and a piece of uranium that acts as a radioactive clock to help determine the date of the probe’s launch. With messages from Earth taking about 22.5 hours to reach the probe, these spacecraft continue to fascinate and intrigue scientists and space enthusiasts around the world.
