PREVIEW

NASA scientists have made contact with their Voyager 1 spacecraft - which is 15 billion miles away from Earth - for the first time in almost six months.
Since November, Voyager 1 had ceased transmitting usable data back to Earth, despite indications that it was operational. However, after months of troubleshooting, staff at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California uncovered the root cause: a malfunctioning chip within the flight data subsystem (FDS), responsible for processing and transmitting data.
Unable to repair the faulty chip, the team devised a groundbreaking solution. They redistributed the affected code across multiple locations within the FDS memory, ensuring its functionality and updating references to its new locations.
On 18 April 2024, engineers successfully relocated the code responsible for packaging engineering data, a crucial step in restoring communication. Despite the vast distance - over 15 billion miles from Earth - it took approximately 22 ½ hours for signals to travel to and from Voyager 1. When confirmation arrived on 20 April, it signaled the first successful data transmission in five months.
The team now plans to repeat this process for other sections of the FDS software, including those essential for returning science data. Meanwhile, Voyager 2, its twin spacecraft, continues to operate without issue.
Launched over 46 years ago, the Voyager missions represent an unparalleled feat of exploration. Having journeyed beyond our solar system, they remain humanity's farthest-reaching emissaries, having provided invaluable insights into the outer reaches of space after their historic encounters with Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune.