Voyager 1 resumes science operations after 6 months of technical issues

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched into space in 1977, resumed its scientific operations after a technical issue that occurred in November 2023, the US space agency has said.

According to NASA, they partially resolved the issue in April when they prompted the spacecraft to begin returning engineering data, and “on May 19, the mission team executed the second step of that repair process and beamed a command to the spacecraft to begin returning science data.”

This marks the spacecraft's return to full data collection activities after a six-month interruption.

“While Voyager 1 is back to conducting science, additional minor work is needed to clean up the effects of the issue. Among other tasks, engineers will synchronise timekeeping software in the spacecraft’s three onboard computers to execute commands at the right time. The team will also perform maintenance on the digital tape recorder, which records some data for the plasma wave instrument that is sent to Earth twice per year.”

Launched to explore the solar system in 1977, Voyager 1 is more than 24.1 billion kilometres away from Earth.