Voyager 1 wakes up after going silent 15 billion miles away

(CLO) The 47-year-old spacecraft Voyager 1 has reconnected with NASA after a technical problem caused the loss of communication.

Voyager 1 is currently using a radio transmitter that hasn't been used since 1981 to send signals back to Earth. Launched in 1977, to prolong the spacecraft's life and continue receiving data from it, scientists had to disconnect some parts of the spacecraft to reduce power consumption.

Voyager 1 spacecraft. Photo: NASA

Voyager 1 is currently the farthest man-made object from Earth, operating outside the heliosphere – the region where the magnetic field and particles from the Sun extend beyond the orbit of Pluto – where its instruments collect samples directly from interstellar space.

Occasionally, engineers will have to send commands to Voyager 1 to activate its heating system, which will warm up parts damaged by prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation. Bruce Waggoner, Voyager mission assurance manager, said the heat could help restore these parts, improving the spacecraft's performance.

The messages were sent to Voyager from NASA's mission control center in California. NASA used a huge array of radio antennas on Earth to communicate with Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, as well as other spacecraft exploring our solar system.

Voyager 1 will then send data back to Earth for confirmation. The one-way travel time for the signal is about 23 hours.

When scientists sent a command to the spacecraft to turn on the heater on October 16, the spacecraft automatically turned off some other instruments. The team discovered the problem when it did not receive a response signal over the Deep Space Network on October 18.

Voyager 1 has used one of its two radio transmitters, called X-band, for decades. The other, called S-band, has not been used since 1981 because its signal is much weaker than X-band.

By October 19, communication with Voyager 1 appeared to have been completely lost. The team believes the fault protection system was activated two more times, possibly shutting down the X-band transmitter and switching the spacecraft to the less power-consuming S-band transmitter.

Although the team didn't think they could pick up a weak signal from the S-band transmitter due to Voyager 1's great distance, engineers eventually picked up the signal.

If the team could have repaired the X-band transmitter, the spacecraft could have sent data back to Earth to explain what went wrong, Waggoner said.

Ha Trang (according to CNN)

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/tau-vu-tru-voyager-1-cach-xa-trai-dat-15-ty-dam-bat-ngo-thuc-day-post319726.html