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Inside NASA's 5-month fight to save the Voyager 1 mission in interstellar space

After working for five months to re-establish communication with the farthest-flung human-made object in existence, NASA announced this week that the Voyager 1 probe had finally phoned home.

For the engineers and scientists who work on NASA’s longest-operating mission in space, it was a moment of joy and intense relief.

“That Saturday morning, we all came in, we’re sitting around boxes of doughnuts and waiting for the data to come back from Voyager,” said Linda Spilker, the project scientist for the Voyager 1 mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We knew exactly what time it was going to happen, and it got really quiet and everybody just sat there and they’re looking at the screen.”

When at long last the spacecraft returned the agency’s call, Spilker said the room erupted in celebration.

“There were cheers, people raising their hands,” she said. “And a sense of relief, too — that OK, after all this hard work and going from barely being able to have a signal coming from Voyager to being in communication again, that was a tremendous relief and a great feeling.”

The problem with Voyager 1 was first detected in November . At the time, NASA said it was still in contact with the spacecraft and could see that it was receiving signals from Earth. But what was being relayed back to mission controllers — including science data and information about the health of the probe and its various systems — was garbled and unreadable.

That kicked off a monthslong push to identify what had gone wrong and try to save the Voyager 1 mission.

Spilker said she and her colleagues stayed hopeful and optimistic, but the team faced enormous challenges. For one, engineers were trying to troubleshoot a spacecraft traveling in interstellar space , more than 15 billion miles away — the ultimate long-distance call.

“With Voyager 1, it takes 22 1/2 hours to get the signal up and 22 1/2 hours to get the signal back, so we’d get the commands ready, send them up, and then like two days later, you’d get the answer if it had worked or not,” Spilker said.

The team eventually determined that the issue stemmed from one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers. Spilker said a hardware failure, perhaps as a result of age or because it was hit by radiation, likely messed up a small section of code in the memory of the computer. The glitch meant Voyager 1 was unable to send coherent updates about its health and science observations.

NASA engineers determined that they would not be able to repair the chip where the mangled software is stored. And the bad code was also too large for Voyager 1's computer to store both it and any newly uploaded instructions. Because the technology aboard Voyager 1 dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, the computer’s memory pales in comparison to any modern smartphone. Spilker said it’s roughly equivalent to the amount of memory in an electronic car key.

The team found a workaround, however: They could divide up the code into smaller parts and store them in different areas of the computer’s memory. Then, they could reprogram the section that needed fixing while ensuring that the entire system still worked cohesively.

That was a feat, because the longevity of the Voyager mission means there are no working test beds or simulators here on Earth to test the new bits of code before they are sent to the spacecraft.

“There were three different people looking through line by line of the patch of the code we were going to send up, looking for anything that they had missed,” Spilker said. “And so it was sort of an eyes-only check of the software that we sent up.”

The hard work paid off.

NASA reported the happy development Monday, writing in a post on X : “Sounding a little more like yourself, #Voyager1.” The spacecraft’s own social media account responded , saying, “Hi, it’s me.”

So far, the team has determined that Voyager 1 is healthy and operating normally. Spilker said the probe’s scientific instruments are on and appear to be working, but it will take some time for Voyager 1 to resume sending back science data.

Voyager 1 and its twin, the Voyager 2 probe, each launched in 1977 on missions to study the outer solar system. As it sped through the cosmos, Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn, studying the planets’ moons up close and snapping images along the way.

Voyager 2, which is 12.6 billion miles away, had close encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and continues to operate as normal.

In 2012, Voyager 1 ventured beyond the solar system , becoming the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, or the space between stars. Voyager 2 followed suit in 2018.

Spilker, who first began working on the Voyager missions when she graduated college in 1977, said the missions could last into the 2030s. Eventually, though, the probes will run out of power or their components will simply be too old to continue operating.

Spilker said it will be tough to finally close out the missions someday, but Voyager 1 and 2 will live on as “our silent ambassadors.”

Both probes carry time capsules with them — messages on gold-plated copper disks that are collectively known as The Golden Record . The disks contain images and sounds that represent life on Earth and humanity’s culture, including snippets of music, animal sounds, laughter and recorded greetings in different languages. The idea is for the probes to carry the messages until they are possibly found by spacefarers in the distant future.

“Maybe in 40,000 years or so, they will be getting relatively close to another star,” Spilker said, “and they could be found at that point.”

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

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22.5 light hours —

Recoding voyager 1—nasa’s interstellar explorer is finally making sense again, "we're pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for, and that's always good news.”.

Stephen Clark - Apr 23, 2024 5:56 pm UTC

Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting, building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations.

Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to wait for a new signal from Voyager 1. The ground team sent a command up to Voyager 1 on Thursday to recode part of the memory of the spacecraft's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) , one of the probe's three computers.

“In the minutes leading up to when we were going to see a signal, you could have heard a pin drop in the room," said Linda Spilker, project scientist for NASA's two Voyager spacecraft at JPL. "It was quiet. People were looking very serious. They were looking at their computer screens. Each of the subsystem (engineers) had pages up that they were looking at, to watch as they would be populated."

Finally, a breakthrough

Launched nearly 47 years ago, Voyager 1 is flying on an outbound trajectory more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and it takes 22-and-a-half hours for a radio signal to cover that distance at the speed of light. This means it takes nearly two days for engineers to uplink a command to Voyager 1 and get a response.

In November, Voyager 1 suddenly stopped transmitting its usual stream of data containing information about the spacecraft's health and measurements from its scientific instruments. Instead, the spacecraft's data stream was entirely unintelligible. Because the telemetry was unreadable, experts on the ground could not easily tell what went wrong. They hypothesized the source of the problem might be in the memory bank of the FDS.

There was a breakthrough last month when engineers sent up a novel command to "poke" Voyager 1's FDS to send back a readout of its memory. This readout allowed engineers to pinpoint the location of the problem in the FDS memory . The FDS is responsible for packaging engineering and scientific data for transmission to Earth.

After a few weeks, NASA was ready to uplink a solution to get the FDS to resume packing engineering data. This data stream includes information on the status of the spacecraft—things like power levels and temperature measurements. This command went up to Voyager 1 through one of NASA's large Deep Space Network antennas Thursday.

Then, the wait for a response. Spilker, who started working on Voyager right out of college in 1977, was in the room when Voyager 1's signal reached Earth Saturday.

"When the time came to get the signal, we could clearly see all of a sudden, boom, we had data, and there were tears and smiles and high fives," she told Ars. "Everyone was very happy and very excited to see that, hey, we're back in communication again with Voyager 1. We're going to see the status of the spacecraft, the health of the spacecraft, for the first time in five months."

Throughout the five months of troubleshooting, Voyager's ground team continued to receive signals indicating the spacecraft was still alive. But until Saturday, they lacked insight into specific details about the status of Voyager 1.

“It’s pretty much just the way we left it," Spilker said. "We're still in the initial phases of analyzing all of the channels and looking at their trends. Some of the temperatures went down a little bit with this period of time that's gone on, but we're pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for. And that's always good news.”

Relocating code

Through their investigation, Voyager's ground team discovered a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory stopped working, probably due to either a cosmic ray hit or a failure of aging hardware. This affected some of the computer's software code.

"That took out a section of memory," Spilker said. "What they have to do is relocate that code into a different portion of the memory, and then make sure that anything that uses those codes, those subroutines, know to go to the new location of memory, for access and to run it."

Only about 3 percent of the FDS memory was corrupted by the bad chip, so engineers needed to transplant that code into another part of the memory bank. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety, NASA said.

So the Voyager team divided the code into sections for storage in different places in the FDS. This wasn't just a copy-and-paste job. Engineers needed to modify some of the code to make sure it will all work together. "Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well," NASA said in a statement.

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NASA Reaches Voyager 2 With a Last-Ditch ‘Shout’ Across the Void

After an erroneous command sent the spacecraft’s antenna askew, mission specialists hatched a plan to point it back toward Earth.

By Katrina Miller

It took an interstellar “shout” across the solar system. But NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Friday that it re-established full communications with Voyager 2, an aging probe exploring the outer edges of the solar system.

“After two weeks of not hearing anything, we’re back to getting unique data from the interstellar medium,” said Linda Spilker, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the lead mission scientist for Voyager 2.

The space agency lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 21 when the mission team accidentally sent a command that pushed the spacecraft’s antenna two degrees away from Earth. On Tuesday morning, officials from the Deep Space Network, a worldwide system of radio dishes NASA uses to communicate with various space probes, detected a carrier signal known as a heartbeat from Voyager 2. It was too faint to extract any data, but enough to confirm that the mission was still operating.

Nonetheless, being able to pick up only the heartbeat “was upsetting and worrisome,” said Suzanne Dodd, the project manager for Voyager 2.

The mission team hatched a plan to send a command on Wednesday reorienting Voyager 2’s antenna back to Earth, using a Deep Space Network radio dish in Canberra, Australia.

The chances of success were slim, according to a spokeswoman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It took 37 hours to know whether the attempt was successful — 18.5 hours for the signal to make it to Voyager 2, and another 18.5 for the data to return.

Ms. Dodd said the waiting period “was pretty nervewracking. You don’t sleep well.”

Scientists, engineers and the flight team were “waiting on pins and needles to hear back from Voyager 2, to see if the command was successful,” Dr. Spilker said. “It was all hands on deck.”

But it worked: On Friday at 12:29 a.m. Eastern time, Voyager 2 began transmitting science data once again. Scientists also confirmed that the probe remained on its original path.

According to Dr. Spilker, mission control in California reacted to the good news with a lot of high fives, tears and sighs of relief.

Voyager 2 launched to space on Aug. 20, 1977, to fly by the solar system’s outer planets and then explore the interstellar space that lies beyond it. The nearly 46-year-old probe is currently more than 12.5 billion miles away from Earth and is collecting data on the distant region of space for scientists to study. Its twin, Voyager 1, was launched weeks after Voyager 2 and became the first to cross the solar system’s boundary.

Had it not established contact, the mission team would have had to wait until Oct. 15, when Voyager 2 is programmed to do an automatic reset of the direction of its antenna.

But it no longer needs to wait, and the mission has resumed data transmissions from beyond the solar system’s heliosphere.

“We did an assessment and the spacecraft looks very healthy, very normal,” Ms. Dodd said. The mission team will continue to run tests to fully understand the status of the spacecraft before resuming regular activity.

Ms. Dodd looks forward to celebrating the probe’s launch anniversary later this month. “Both of these spacecraft are truly remarkable in their longevity,” she said, referring to Voyager 2 and Voyager 1. “They’re like the spacecraft with nine lives.”

Katrina Miller is a science reporting fellow for The Times. She recently earned her Ph.D. in particle physics from the University of Chicago. More about Katrina Miller

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Voyager 1 transmitting data again after Nasa remotely fixes 46-year-old probe

Engineers spent months working to repair link with Earth’s most distant spacecraft, says space agency

Earth’s most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1, has started communicating properly again with Nasa after engineers worked for months to remotely fix the 46-year-old probe.

Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which makes and operates the agency’s robotic spacecraft, said in December that the probe – more than 15bn miles (24bn kilometres) away – was sending gibberish code back to Earth.

In an update released on Monday , JPL announced the mission team had managed “after some inventive sleuthing” to receive usable data about the health and status of Voyager 1’s engineering systems. “The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again,” JPL said. Despite the fault, Voyager 1 had operated normally throughout, it added.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 was designed with the primary goal of conducting close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn in a five-year mission. However, its journey continued and the spacecraft is now approaching a half-century in operation.

Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in August 2012, making it the first human-made object to venture out of the solar system. It is currently travelling at 37,800mph (60,821km/h).

Hi, it's me. - V1 https://t.co/jgGFBfxIOe — NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) April 22, 2024

The recent problem was related to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, which are responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it is sent to Earth. Unable to repair a broken chip, the JPL team decided to move the corrupted code elsewhere, a tricky job considering the old technology.

The computers on Voyager 1 and its sister probe, Voyager 2, have less than 70 kilobytes of memory in total – the equivalent of a low-resolution computer image. They use old-fashioned digital tape to record data.

The fix was transmitted from Earth on 18 April but it took two days to assess if it had been successful as a radio signal takes about 22 and a half hours to reach Voyager 1 and another 22 and a half hours for a response to come back to Earth. “When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on 20 April, they saw that the modification worked,” JPL said.

Alongside its announcement, JPL posted a photo of members of the Voyager flight team cheering and clapping in a conference room after receiving usable data again, with laptops, notebooks and doughnuts on the table in front of them.

The Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who flew two space shuttle missions and acted as commander of the International Space Station, compared the JPL mission to long-distance maintenance on a vintage car.

“Imagine a computer chip fails in your 1977 vehicle. Now imagine it’s in interstellar space, 15bn miles away,” Hadfield wrote on X . “Nasa’s Voyager probe just got fixed by this team of brilliant software mechanics.

Voyager 1 and 2 have made numerous scientific discoveries , including taking detailed recordings of Saturn and revealing that Jupiter also has rings, as well as active volcanism on one of its moons, Io. The probes later discovered 23 new moons around the outer planets.

As their trajectory takes them so far from the sun, the Voyager probes are unable to use solar panels, instead converting the heat produced from the natural radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity to power the spacecraft’s systems.

Nasa hopes to continue to collect data from the two Voyager spacecraft for several more years but engineers expect the probes will be too far out of range to communicate in about a decade, depending on how much power they can generate. Voyager 2 is slightly behind its twin and is moving slightly slower.

In roughly 40,000 years, the probes will pass relatively close, in astronomical terms, to two stars. Voyager 1 will come within 1.7 light years of a star in the constellation Ursa Minor, while Voyager 2 will come within a similar distance of a star called Ross 248 in the constellation of Andromeda.

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After a 12.3 billion-mile 'shout,' NASA regains full contact with Voyager 2

Emily Olson

Ayana Archie

A NASA image of one of the twin Voyager space probes. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 21 after mistakenly pointing its antenna 2 degrees away from Earth. On Friday, contact was fully restored. NASA/Getty Images hide caption

A NASA image of one of the twin Voyager space probes. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 21 after mistakenly pointing its antenna 2 degrees away from Earth. On Friday, contact was fully restored.

Talk about a long-distance call.

NASA said it resumed full communications with the Voyager 2 on Friday after almost two weeks of silence from the interstellar spacecraft.

The agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said a series of ground antennas, part of the Deep Space Network, registered a carrier signal from Voyager 2 on Tuesday. However, the signal was too faint.

A Deep Space Network facility in Australia then sent "the equivalent of an interstellar 'shout' " to the Voyager 2 telling it to turn its antenna back toward Earth. The signal was sent more than 12.3 billion miles away and it took 37 hours to get a response from the spacecraft, NASA said.

Scientists received a response at about 12:30 a.m. ET Friday. Voyager 2 is now operating normally, returning science and telemetry data, and "remains on its expected trajectory," NASA said.

NASA said Friday that it lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 21 after "a series of planned commands" inadvertently caused the craft to turn its antenna 2 degrees away from the direction of its home planet.

NASA is keeping Voyager 2 going until at least 2026 by tapping into backup power

What might seem like a slight error had big consequences: NASA previously said it wouldn't be able to communicate with the craft until October, when the satellite would go through one of its routine repositioning steps.

"That is a long time to wait, so we'll try sending up commands several times" before October, program manager Suzanne Dodd told The Associated Press.

These are the 4 astronauts who'll take a trip around the moon next year

Even if Voyager 2 had failed to reestablish communications until fall, the engineers expected it to stay moving on its planned trajectory on the edge of the solar system.

Voyager 2 entered interstellar space in November 2018 — more than 40 years since it launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. To this day, Voyager 2 remains one of only two human-made objects to ever operate outside the heliosphere, which NASA defines as "the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the Sun."

Its primary mission was to study the outer solar system, and already, Voyager 2 has proved its status as a planetary pioneer . Equipped with several imaging instruments, the spacecraft is credited with documenting the discovery of 16 new moons, six new rings and Neptune's "Great Dark Spot."

Voyager 2 Bids Adieu To The Heliosphere, Entering Interstellar Space

Voyager 2 is also carrying some precious cargo, like a message in a bottle, should it find itself as the subject of another world's discovery: a golden record containing a variety of natural sounds, greetings in 55 languages and a 90-minute selection of music.

Last month's command mix-up foreshadows the craft's inevitable end an estimated three years from now.

"Eventually, there will not be enough electricity to power even one instrument," reads a NASA page documenting the spacecraft's travels . "Then, Voyager 2 will silently continue its eternal journey among the stars."

Meanwhile, Voyager 2's sister spacecraft, Voyager 1, is still broadcasting and transmitting data just fine from a slightly farther vantage point of 15 billion miles away.

Correction Aug. 3, 2023

A previous version of this article implied that Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 2018 when, in fact, the spacecraft concluded its encounter with the planet and started heading toward Neptune in 1986. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space in November 2018.

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Voyager, NASA’s Longest-Lived Mission, Logs 45 Years in Space

This archival image taken at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on March 23, 1977, shows engineers preparing the Voyager 2 spacecraft ahead of its launch later that year.

Launched in 1977, the twin Voyager probes are NASA’s longest-operating mission and the only spacecraft ever to explore interstellar space.

NASA’s twin Voyager probes have become, in some ways, time capsules of their era: They each carry an eight-track tape player for recording data, they have about 3 million times less memory than modern cellphones, and they transmit data about 38,000 times slower than a 5G internet connection.

Yet the Voyagers remain on the cutting edge of space exploration. Managed and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, they are the only probes to ever explore interstellar space – the galactic ocean that our Sun and its planets travel through.

The Sun and the planets reside in the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the Sun’s magnetic field and the outward flow of solar wind (charged particles from the Sun). Researchers – some of them younger than the two distant spacecraft – are combining Voyager’s observations with data from newer missions to get a more complete picture of our Sun and how the heliosphere interacts with interstellar space.

NASA’s Solar System Interactive lets users see where the Voyagers are right now relative to the planets, the Sun, and other spacecraft. View it yourself here . Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“The heliophysics mission fleet provides invaluable insights into our Sun, from understanding the corona or the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, to examining the Sun’s impacts throughout the solar system, including here on Earth, in our atmosphere, and on into interstellar space,” said Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Over the last 45 years, the Voyager missions have been integral in providing this knowledge and have helped change our understanding of the Sun and its influence in ways no other spacecraft can.”

The Voyagers are also ambassadors, each carrying a golden record containing images of life on Earth, diagrams of basic scientific principles, and audio that includes sounds from nature, greetings in multiple languages, and music. The gold-coated records serve as a cosmic “message in a bottle” for anyone who might encounter the space probes. At the rate gold decays in space and is eroded by cosmic radiation, the records will last more than a billion years.

45 Years of Voyager I and II

Launched in 1977, NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft inspired the world with pioneering visits to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Their journey continues 45 years later as both probes explore interstellar space, the region outside the protective heliosphere created by our Sun. Researchers – some younger than the spacecraft – are now using Voyager data to solve mysteries of our solar system and beyond.

This archival photo shows engineers working on vibration acoustics and pyro shock testing of NASA’s Voyager on Nov. 18, 1976. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Voyager 1 acquired this image of a volcanic explosion on Io on March 4, 1979, about 11 hours before the spacecraft’s closest approach to the moon of Jupiter.

Neptune’s green-blue atmosphere was shown in greater detail than ever before in this image from NASA’s Voyager 2 as the spacecraft rapidly approached its encounter with the giant planet in August 1989.

This updated version of the iconic "Pale Blue Dot" image taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft uses modern image-processing software and techniques to revisit the well-known Voyager view while attempting to respect the original data and intent of those who planned the images.

This illustrated graphic was made to mark Voyager 1’s entry into interstellar space in 2012. It puts solar system distances in perspective, with the scale bar in astronomical units and each set distance beyond 1 AU (the average distance between the Sun and Earth) representing 10 times the previous distance.

This graphic highlights some of the Voyager mission’s key accomplishments. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Full image details

This graphic provides some of the mission’s key statistics from 2018, when NASA’s Voyager 2 probe exited the heliosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Full image details

Beyond Expectations

Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, quickly followed by Voyager 1 on Sept. 5. Both probes traveled to Jupiter and Saturn, with Voyager 1 moving faster and reaching them first. Together, the probes unveiled much about the solar system’s two largest planets and their moons. Voyager 2 also became the first and only spacecraft to fly close to Uranus (in 1986) and Neptune (in 1989), offering humanity remarkable views of – and insights into – these distant worlds.

While Voyager 2 was conducting these flybys, Voyager 1 headed toward the boundary of the heliosphere. Upon exiting it in 2012 , Voyager 1 discovered that the heliosphere blocks 70% of cosmic rays, or energetic particles created by exploding stars. Voyager 2, after completing its planetary explorations, continued to the heliosphere boundary, exiting in 2018 . The twin spacecraft’s combined data from this region has challenged previous theories about the exact shape of the heliosphere.

Voyager 1 and 2 have accomplished a lot since they launched in 1977. This infographic highlights the mission’s major milestones, including visiting the four outer planets and exiting the heliosphere, or the protective bubble of magnetic fields and particles created by the Sun.

“Today, as both Voyagers explore interstellar space, they are providing humanity with observations of uncharted territory,” said Linda Spilker, Voyager’s deputy project scientist at JPL. “This is the first time we’ve been able to directly study how a star, our Sun, interacts with the particles and magnetic fields outside our heliosphere, helping scientists understand the local neighborhood between the stars, upending some of the theories about this region, and providing key information for future missions.”

The Long Journey

Over the years, the Voyager team has grown accustomed to surmounting challenges that come with operating such mature spacecraft, sometimes calling upon retired colleagues for their expertise or digging through documents written decades ago.

Each Voyager is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator containing plutonium, which gives off heat that is converted to electricity. As the plutonium decays, the heat output decreases and the Voyagers lose electricity. To compensate , the team turned off all nonessential systems and some once considered essential, including heaters that protect the still-operating instruments from the frigid temperatures of space. All five of the instruments that have had their heaters turned off since 2019 are still working, despite being well below the lowest temperatures they were ever tested at.

Get the Latest JPL News

Recently, Voyager 1 began experiencing an issue that caused status information about one of its onboard systems to become garbled. Despite this, the system and spacecraft otherwise continue to operate normally, suggesting the problem is with the production of the status data, not the system itself. The probe is still sending back science observations while the engineering team tries to fix the problem or find a way to work around it.

“The Voyagers have continued to make amazing discoveries, inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers,” said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at JPL. “We don’t know how long the mission will continue, but we can be sure that the spacecraft will provide even more scientific surprises as they travel farther away from the Earth.”

More About the Mission

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL built and operates the Voyager spacecraft. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/voyager

News Media Contact

Calla Cofield

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

626-808-2469

[email protected]

NASA's interstellar Voyager 1 spacecraft isn't doing so well — here's what we know

Since late 2023, engineers have been trying to get the Voyager spacecraft back online.

On Dec. 12, 2023, NASA shared some worrisome news about Voyager 1, the first probe to walk away from our solar system 's gravitational party and enter the isolation of interstellar space . Surrounded by darkness, Voyager 1 seems to be glitching. 

It has been out there for more than 45 years, having supplied us with a bounty of treasure like the discovery of two new moons of Jupiter, another incredible ring of Saturn and the warm feeling that comes from knowing pieces of our lives will drift across the cosmos even after we're gone. (See: The Golden Record .) But now, Voyager 1 's fate seems to be uncertain.

As of Feb. 6, NASA said the team remains working on bringing the spacecraft back to proper health. "Engineers are still working to resolve a data issue on Voyager 1," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). "We can talk to the spacecraft, and it can hear us, but it's a slow process given the spacecraft's incredible distance from Earth."

Related: NASA's interstellar Voyager probes get software updates beamed from 12 billion miles away

So, on the bright side, even though Voyager 1 sits so utterly far away from us, ground control can actually communicate with it. In fact, last year, scientists beamed some software updates to the spacecraft as well as its counterpart, Voyager 2 , from billions of miles away. Though on the dimmer side, due to that distance, a single back-and-forth communication between Voyager 1 and anyone on Earth takes a total of 45 hours. If NASA finds a solution, it won't be for some time .

The issue, engineers realized, has to do with one of Voyager 1's onboard computers known as the Flight Data System, or FDS. (The backup FDS stopped working in 1981.)

"The FDS is not communicating properly with one of the probe's subsystems, called the telemetry modulation unit (TMU)," NASA said in a blog post. "As a result, no science or engineering data is being sent back to Earth." This is of course despite the fact that ground control can indeed send information to Voyager 1, which, at the time of writing this article , sits about 162 AU's from our planet. One AU is equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun , or 149,597,870.7 kilometers (92,955,807.3 miles).

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From the beginning 

Voyager 1's FDS dilemma was first noticed last year , after the probe's TMU stopped sending back clear data and started procuring a bunch of rubbish. 

As NASA explains in the blog post, one of the FDS' core jobs is to collect information about the spacecraft itself, in terms of its health and general status. "It then combines that information into a single data 'package' to be sent back to Earth by the TMU," the post says. "The data is in the form of ones and zeros, or binary code." 

However, the TMU seemed to be shuffling back a non-intelligible version of binary code recently. Or, as the team puts it, it seems like the system is "stuck." Yes, the engineers tried turning it off and on again. 

That didn't work. 

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Then, in early February, Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Ars Technica that the team might have pinpointed what's going on with the FDS at last. The theory is that the problem lies somewhere with the FDS' memory; there might be a computer bit that got corrupted. Unfortunately, though, because the FDS and TMU work together to relay information about the spacecraft's health, engineers are having a hard time figuring out where exactly the possible corruption may exist. The messenger is the one that needs a messenger.

They do know, however, that the spacecraft must be alive because they are receiving what's known as a "carrier tone." Carrier tone wavelengths don't carry information, but they are signals nonetheless, akin to a heartbeat. It's also worth considering that Voyager 1 has experienced problems before, such as in 2022 when the probe's "attitude articulation and control system" exhibited some blips that were ultimately patched up. Something similar happened to Voyager 2 during the summer of 2023, when Voyager 1's twin suffered some antenna complications before coming right back online again.

Still, Dodd says this situation has been the most serious since she began working on the historic Voyager mission.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Monisha Ravisetti is Space.com's Astronomy Editor. She covers black holes, star explosions, gravitational waves, exoplanet discoveries and other enigmas hidden across the fabric of space and time. Previously, she was a science writer at CNET, and before that, reported for The Academic Times. Prior to becoming a writer, she was an immunology researcher at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She graduated from New York University in 2018 with a B.A. in philosophy, physics and chemistry. She spends too much time playing online chess. Her favorite planet is Earth.

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• Classical Motion There must be more to this story. Let me see if I have this right. They can receive a carrier. But the modulator gives them junk. Or possibly the processor's memory. And they can send new software. New instructions. So, why not simply use the packet data, to key the carrier on and off. OOK On and Off Keying. Telegraphy. Reply

Admin said: NASA's Voyager 1 deep space probe started glitching last year, and scientists aren't sure they can fix it. NASA's interstellar Voyager 1 spacecraft isn't doing so well — here's what we know : Read more

• Classical Motion I wish something would kick one of them back to us. I would love to see an analysis of every cubic cm of it. Reply
• billslugg Modulating the carrier wave would do no good unless the carrier knew what information to send us. The unit that failed takes the raw data and then tells the carrier what to say. Without the modulation unit there is no data to send. Reply

Classical Motion said: I wish something would kick one of them back to us. I would love to see an analysis of every cubic cm of it.

• Classical Motion I read that they were not sure if it was the modulator or the packet memory. The packet buffer. If they can send patch, it's easy to relocate that buffer into another section of memory. This can be done at several different memory locations to verify if it is a memory problem. If that works, then the modulator is ok. If the modulator fails with all those buffers, then it's the modulator. Turn off modulator. Just enable the carrier for a certain duration for a 1 bit. And turn it off for that certain duration for a 0 bit. One simply rotates that buffer string thru the accumulator at the duration rate, and use status flags to key the transmitter. Very simple and very short code. The packet is nothing more that a 128 BYTE or multiple size string of 1s and 0s. OOK is a very common wireless modulation. That's why I commented on more must be going on. And I would like to see what 30 years naked in space does to man molded matter. Reply

Classical Motion said: I read that they were not sure if it was the modulator or the packet memory. The packet buffer. If they can send patch, it's easy to relocate that buffer into another section of memory. This can be done at several different memory locations to verify if it is a memory problem. If that works, then the modulator is ok. If the modulator fails with all those buffers, then it's the modulator. Turn off modulator. Just enable the carrier for a certain duration for a 1 bit. And turn it off for that certain duration for a 0 bit. One simply rotates that buffer string thru the accumulator at the duration rate, and use status flags to key the transmitter. Very simple and very short code. The packet is nothing more that a 128 BYTE or multiple size string of 1s and 0s. OOK is a very common wireless modulation. That's why I commented on more must be going on. And I would like to see what 30 years naked in space does to man molded matter.

• damienassurre I think they should make another space craft and have it pick up voyager 1 and bring it back the info it went through would very valuable to stellar travel Reply

damienassurre said: I think they should make another space craft and have it pick up voyager 1 and bring it back the info it went through would very valuable to stellar travel

• billslugg The newer forms of memory can't be used easily in outer space as their feature size is too small and too easily corrupted by a cosmic ray. Very large, bulky features keep spacecraft memory far smaller than what earthbound computers can enjoy. As far as returning one of the Voyagers to Earth, it would take several thousand years using available technology. Better to wait for more advanced propulsion technologies. Reply
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NASA Engineers Are Racing to Fix Voyager 1

Voyager 1 is still alive out there , barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission's loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA's longest-lived spacecraft.

The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1's ability to send back telemetry data, such as measurements from the craft's science instruments or basic engineering information about how the probe was doing. As a result, the team has no insight into key parameters regarding the craft's propulsion, power, or control systems.

"It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven't given up," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. "There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I’ve been project manager."

Dodd became the project manager for NASA's Voyager mission in 2010, overseeing a small cadre of engineers responsible for humanity's exploration into interstellar space. Voyager 1 is the most distant spacecraft ever, speeding away from the sun at 38,000 mph (17 kilometers per second).

Voyager 2, which launched 16 days before Voyager 1 in 1977, isn't quite as far away. It took a more leisurely route through the solar system, flying past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, while Voyager 1 picked up speed during an encounter with Saturn to overtake its sister spacecraft.

For the past couple of decades, NASA has devoted Voyager's instruments to studying cosmic rays, the magnetic field, and the plasma environment in interstellar space. They're not taking pictures anymore. Both probes have traveled beyond the heliopause, where the flow of particles emanating from the sun runs into the interstellar medium.

There are no other operational spacecraft currently exploring interstellar space. NASA's New Horizons probe, which flew past Pluto in 2015, is on track to reach interstellar space in the 2040s.

The latest problem with Voyager 1 lies in the probe's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft working alongside a command-and-control central computer and another device overseeing attitude control and pointing.

The FDS is responsible for collecting science and engineering data from the spacecraft's network of sensors and then combining the information into a single data package in binary code—a series of 1s and 0s. A separate component called the Telemetry Modulation Unit actually sends the data package back to Earth through Voyager's 12-foot (3.7-meter) dish antenna.

In November, the data packages transmitted by Voyager 1 manifested a repeating pattern of 1s and 0s as if it were stuck, according to NASA. Dodd said engineers at JPL have spent the better part of three months trying to diagnose the cause of the problem. She said the engineering team is "99.9 percent sure" the problem originated in the FDS, which appears to be having trouble "frame syncing" data.

So far, the ground team believes the most likely explanation for the problem is a bit of corrupted memory in the FDS. However, because of the computer hangup, engineers lack detailed data from Voyager 1 that might lead them to the root of the issue. "It's likely somewhere in the FDS memory," Dodd said. "A bit got flipped or corrupted. But without the telemetry, we can't see where that FDS memory corruption is."

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When it was developed five decades ago, Voyager's Flight Data Subsystem was an innovation in computing. It was the first computer on a spacecraft to make use of volatile memory. Each Voyager spacecraft launched with two FDS computers, but Voyager 1's backup FDS failed in 1981, according to Dodd.

The only signal Voyager 1's Earthbound engineers have received since November is a carrier tone, which basically tells the team the spacecraft is still alive. There's no indication of any other major problems. Changes in the carrier signal's modulation indicate Voyager 1 is receiving commands uplinked from Earth.

"Unfortunately, we haven't cracked the nut yet, or solved the problem, or gotten any telemetry back," Dodd said.

In the next few weeks, Voyager's ground team plans to transmit commands for Voyager 1 to try to isolate where the suspected corrupted memory lies within the FDS computer. One of the ideas involves switching the computer to operate in different modes, such as the operating parameters the FDS used when Voyager 1 was flying by Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980. The hope among Voyager engineers is that the transition to different data modes might reveal what part of the FDS memory needs a correction.

This is a lot more complicated than it might seem on the surface. For one thing, the data modes engineers might command Voyager 1 into haven't been used for 40 years or more. Nobody has thought about doing this with Voyager's flight data computer for decades.

Voyager 1 and 2 have an outsized public profile compared to the resources NASA commits to keeping the spacecraft going. Fewer than a dozen people typically work on the Voyager mission. This number has slightly increased since the computer problem appeared in November, with a small "tiger team" of around eight experts in flight data systems, software, and spacecraft communications assigned to help troubleshoot the glitch.

"Not to be morose, but a lot of Voyager people are dead," Dodd said. "So the people that built the spacecraft are not alive anymore. We do have a reasonably good set of documentation, but a lot of it is in paper, so you do this archaeology dig to get documents."

Imagine rummaging through a user's manual for an antique car. The book's weathered pages are probably fraying. That's not unlike what Voyager engineers, some of whom weren't alive when the mission launched, are experiencing now.

"We have sheets and sheets of schematics that are paper, that are all yellowed on the corners, and all signed in 1974," Dodd said. "They’re pinned up on the walls, and people are looking at them. That's a whole story in itself, just how to get to the information you need to be able to talk about the commanding decisions or what the problem might be."

This is a familiar task for Voyager engineers. In the last few years, the mission's core team at JPL has consulted archived documents to troubleshoot other, less serious computer problems and develop a new way to operate thrusters on both spacecraft to stave off the accumulation of residue in fuel lines.

While spacecraft engineers love redundancy, they no longer have the luxury of backups on the Voyagers. That means, in any particular section of the spacecraft, a failure of a single part could bring the mission to a halt. Both spacecraft run off nuclear batteries, which produce a little less electricity each year as their plutonium power sources decay. Toward the end of the 2020s, the declining power will force NASA to start turning off instruments on each spacecraft.

Most of NASA's modern missions exploring the solar system have simulators on the ground to test commands and procedures before sending them to the real spacecraft. This practice can reveal commanding errors that could put a mission at risk.

“It is difficult to command Voyager," Dodd said. "We don't have any type of simulator for this. We don't have any hardware simulator. We don't have any software simulator. There's no simulator with the FDS, no hardware where we can try it on the ground first before we send it. So that makes people more cautious, and it's a balance between getting commanding right and taking risks."

Managers are also aware of Voyager 1's age. It's operating on borrowed time. "So we don't want to spend forever deciding what we want to do," Dodd said. "Something else might fail. The thrusters might fail. We want to do the right thing, but we can't hem and haw over what the right thing is. We need to look at things methodically and logically, make a decision, and go for it."

When it comes time to send up more commands to try to save Voyager 1, operators at JPL will have to wait more than 45 hours to get a response. The spacecraft's vast distance and position in the southern sky require NASA to use the largest 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at a Deep Space Network tracking site in Australia, one of the network's most in-demand antennas .

"The data rates are very low, and this anomaly causes us not to have any telemetry," Dodd said. "We're kind of shooting in the blind a little bit because we don't know what the status of the spacecraft is completely."

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica .

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News | November 4, 2019

Voyager 2 illuminates boundary of interstellar space.

One year ago, on Nov. 5, 2018, NASA's Voyager 2 became only the second spacecraft in history to leave the heliosphere - the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by our Sun. At a distance of about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from Earth - well beyond the orbit of Pluto - Voyager 2 had entered interstellar space, or the region between stars. Today, five new research papers in the journal Nature Astronomy describe what scientists observed during and since Voyager 2's historic crossing.

Each paper details the findings from one of Voyager 2's five operating science instruments: a magnetic field sensor, two instruments to detect energetic particles in different energy ranges and two instruments for studying plasma (a gas composed of charged particles). Taken together, the findings help paint a picture of this cosmic shoreline, where the environment created by our Sun ends and the vast ocean of interstellar space begins.

The Sun's heliosphere is like a ship sailing through interstellar space. Both the heliosphere and interstellar space are filled with plasma, a gas that has had some of its atoms stripped of their electrons. The plasma inside the heliosphere is hot and sparse, while the plasma in interstellar space is colder and denser. The space between stars also contains cosmic rays, or particles accelerated by exploding stars. Voyager 1 discovered that the heliosphere protects Earth and the other planets from more than 70% of that radiation.

When Voyager 2 exited the heliosphere last year , scientists announced that its two energetic particle detectors noticed dramatic changes: The rate of heliospheric particles detected by the instruments plummeted, while the rate of cosmic rays (which typically have higher energies than the heliospheric particles) increased dramatically and remained high. The changes confirmed that the probe had entered a new region of space.

Before Voyager 1 reached the edge of the heliosphere in 2012, scientists didn't know exactly how far this boundary was from the Sun. The two probes exited the heliosphere at different locations and also at different times in the constantly repeating, approximately 11-year solar cycle, over the course of which the Sun goes through a period of high and low activity. Scientists expected that the edge of the heliosphere, called the heliopause, can move as the Sun's activity changes, sort of like a lung expanding and contracting with breath. This was consistent with the fact that the two probes encountered the heliopause at different distances from the Sun.

The new papers now confirm that Voyager 2 is not yet in undisturbed interstellar space: Like its twin, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 appears to be in a perturbed transitional region just beyond the heliosphere.

"The Voyager probes are showing us how our Sun interacts with the stuff that fills most of the space between stars in the Milky Way galaxy," said Ed Stone, project scientist for Voyager and a professor of physics at Caltech. "Without this new data from Voyager 2, we wouldn't know if what we were seeing with Voyager 1 was characteristic of the entire heliosphere or specific just to the location and time when it crossed."

Pushing Through Plasma

The two Voyager spacecraft have now confirmed that the plasma in local interstellar space is significantly denser than the plasma inside the heliosphere, as scientists expected. Voyager 2 has now also measured the temperature of the plasma in nearby interstellar space and confirmed it is colder than the plasma inside the heliosphere.

In 2012, Voyager 1 observed a slightly higher-than-expected plasma density just outside the heliosphere, indicating that the plasma is being somewhat compressed. Voyager 2 observed that the plasma outside the heliosphere is slightly warmer than expected, which could also indicate it is being compressed. (The plasma outside is still colder than the plasma inside.) Voyager 2 also observed a slight increase in plasma density just before it exited the heliosphere, indicating that the plasma is compressed around the inside edge of the bubble. But scientists don't yet fully understand what is causing the compression on either side.

Leaking Particles

If the heliosphere is like a ship sailing through interstellar space, it appears the hull is somewhat leaky. One of Voyager's particle instruments showed that a trickle of particles from inside the heliosphere is slipping through the boundary and into interstellar space. Voyager 1 exited close to the very "front" of the heliosphere, relative to the bubble's movement through space. Voyager 2, on the other hand, is located closer to the flank, and this region appears to be more porous than the region where Voyager 1 is located.

Magnetic Field Mystery

An observation by Voyager 2's magnetic field instrument confirms a surprising result from Voyager 1: The magnetic field in the region just beyond the heliopause is parallel to the magnetic field inside the heliosphere. With Voyager 1, scientists had only one sample of these magnetic fields and couldn't say for sure whether the apparent alignment was characteristic of the entire exterior region or just a coincidence. Voyager 2's magnetometer observations confirm the Voyager 1 finding and indicate that the two fields align, according to Stone.

The Voyager probes launched in 1977, and both flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 changed course at Saturn in order to fly by Uranus and Neptune, performing the only close flybys of those planets in history. The Voyager probes completed their Grand Tour of the planets and began their Interstellar Mission to reach the heliopause in 1989. Voyager 1, the faster of the two probes, is currently over 13.6 billion miles (22 billion kilometers) from the Sun, while Voyager 2 is 11.3 billion miles (18.2 billion kilometers) from the Sun. It takes light about 16.5 hours to travel from Voyager 2 to Earth. By comparison, light traveling from the Sun takes about eight minutes to reach Earth.

More information about Voyager is available at the following site:

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/

News Media Contact

Calla Cofield Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 626-808-2469 [email protected]

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Voyager Therapeutics Announces First Quarter 2024 Conference Call and Webcast

LEXINGTON, Mass., May 06, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Voyager Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: VYGR), a biotechnology company dedicated to advancing neurogenetic medicines, today announced it will report first quarter 2024 financial and operating results after market close on Monday, May 13, 2024. Subsequently, the Company will host a conference call and webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET to review its financial and operating results.

To participate via telephone and join the call live, please register in advance here: https://register.vevent.com/register/BI1f6af80e7a614ca7925cbad2f35a55c6. Upon registration, telephone participants will receive a confirmation email detailing how to join the conference call, including the dial-in number and a unique passcode. A live webcast of the call will also be available on the Investors section of the Voyager website at ir.voyagertherapeutics.com, and a replay of the call will be available at the same link approximately two hours after its completion. The replay will be available for at least 30 days following the conclusion of the call.

About Voyager Therapeutics

Voyager Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: VYGR) is a biotechnology company dedicated to leveraging the power of human genetics to modify the course of – and ultimately cure – neurological diseases. Our pipeline includes programs for Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease, and multiple other diseases of the central nervous system. Many of our programs are derived from our TRACER™ AAV capsid discovery platform, which we have used to generate novel capsids and identify associated receptors to potentially enable high brain penetration with genetic medicines following intravenous dosing. Some of our programs are wholly owned, and some are advancing with partners including Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease; Novartis Pharma AG; Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc.; and Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc. For more information, visit www.voyagertherapeutics.com.

Voyager Therapeutics ® is a registered trademark, and TRACER™ is a trademark, of Voyager Therapeutics, Inc.

Trista Morrison, NACD.DC, [email protected] Investors: Adam Bero, Ph.D., [email protected] Media: Brooke Shenkin, [email protected]

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Australia has suffered a brutal early exit at Eurovision 2024, with our entry failing to make it past the first semi-final this morning and secure a place in the Grand Final.

Australia’s entry this year is electronic music duo Electric Fields, aka vocalist Zaachariaha Fielding alongside keyboard player and producer Michael Ross.

Their song, One Milkali (One Blood) , was an uplifting dance floor anthem sung partly in the Indigenous language Yankunytjatjara – but it wasn’t enough to see them join the ten acts progressing to the Eurovision Grand Final from today’s semi-final. Their performance landed them in the bottom five out of the 15 acts that performed, alongside Iceland, Poland, Moldova and Azerbaijan, who all failed to qualify.

It’s a major upset for Australia at Eurovision, as we’ve traditionally placed quite highly since first entering the contest almost a decade ago.

Our debut entry, Guy Sebastian, finished fifth in 2015, while a year later Dami Im gave us our best result to date, placing second with the stirring Sound of Silence. Since then we’ve had top ten placings with Isaiah (2017, #9), Kate Miller-Heidke (2019, #9) and last year with rockers Voyager (again, a #9 placing).

Aussie pop icon Jess Mauboy got lost in the mix of the 2018 contest, only managing a #20 placing with We Got Love .

But Electric Fields’ placing is the worst result for Australia since that of singer Montaigne, who fell victim to the pandemic two years in a row: The 2020 contest was cancelled, and when Montaigne re-entered the next year, Covid restrictions meant they had to perform from a studio in Australia, and failed to qualify for the grand final.

After Friday’s second semi-final, This year’s Eurovision Song Contest will take place on Sunday in Malmo, Sweden.

Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest: How we’ve placed

2015: Guy Sebastian, Tonight Again : #5

2016: Dami Im, Sound of Silence : #2

2017: Isaiah, Don’t Come Easy: #9

2018: Jessica Mauboy, We Got Love : #20

2019: Kate Miller-Heidke, Zero Gravity: #9

2020: Montaigne, Don’t Break Me : Contest cancelled due to Covid

2021: Montaigne, Technicolour : Failed to qualify

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2022: Sheldon Riley, Not The Same: #15

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2024” Electric Fields, One Milkali (One Blood ): Failed to qualify

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