NASA fixed a remote link to the 46-year-old Voyager 1 space probe on Monday, according to an update from the agency.
The probe had been sending “gibberish” code back to NASA because of a broken chip, according to a report by the Guardian. Given the distance, NASA was not able to repair the chip but rearranged the probe’s code so that it could send usable data, a challenge given the spacecraft’s limited 70-kilobyte memory.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrated the news on X, posting, “For the first time since November, Voyager 1 is returning useable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. Next step: Enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again.”
Astronaut Chris Hadfield, former commander of the International Space Station, celebrated the news on social media.
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Voyager 1 was launched in September 1977 and left the solar system in 2012. It is 15 billion miles away and traveling at 37,800 mph, according to the report, and a signal from NASA takes 22 1/2 hours to reach the probe and another 22 1/2 hours for a signal to come back.
Voyagers 1 and 2 are best known for conducting surveys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and of each carrying a golden record, each of which contains sounds of nature, human voices, music, and images. The records were designed by a committee led by Carl Sagan and are intended “to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.”
