Last November, the Voyager 1 probe encountered various technical problems rendering it completely silent. Many saw this failure as the end of the probe, which was then celebrating its 46th anniversary. Launched in 1977 in conjunction with Voyager 2 in 1977, Voyager 1 became the first ever man-made object to enter interstellar space in 2012, and is currently more than 25 billion kilometers from Earth. Despite this distance, the probe continued to send data to NASA until last November.
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It was during this period that Voyager 1 stopped transmitting new information, and many NASA engineers worked on diagnosing and resolving the probe’s technical problems. This process proved to be particularly long and exhausting, as it took nearly two days (45 hours) for the data to be sent to the probe and then received back by NASA.
The farthest object from Earth is alive (but not for long)
In April, the probe began to show signs of life again. Until then, Voyager 1 had stopped sending its binary codes made up of 0s and 1s to NASA. After a few months, engineers were able to detect the chip responsible for the technical problems, deactivate it then program a new one in order to transmit data again. The Voyager 1 probe is therefore once again fully operational, as are its four scientific instruments equipped on board.
Good news, but which could be short-lived: in fact, NASA had estimated that the nuclear generators of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 could last until 2025. In other words, there is a good chance that the two probes do not reach their fiftieth birthday in 2027.
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