NASA’s Voyager 1 Spacecraft Just Turned On A Radio Transmitter That Was Offline Since 1981
Voyager 1 spacecraft launched on Sept. 5, 1977, has continued to transmit data to humans from interstellar space. The space probe that escaped the solar system in 2012 is now struggling to transmit data to NASA scientists from billions of miles away.
During its early mission within the Solar system, NASA turned off some of its equipment which will be used for backups. In October 2024, NASA lost contact with the Voyager 1 for a short period. However, the spacecraft reconnected with the space agency using a radio transmitter that had been offline since 1981.
NASA is so excited to reestablish communication with the Voyager 1 space probe and they are now trying to figure out what actually caused the previous problem.
What inspired the Voyager 1 spacecraft to switch to a radio transmitter it hasn’t used in over 40 years?
On October 16 this year, NASA engineers sent a command of instructions to the Voyager 1. The command instructed the spacecraft to switch on one of its heaters. However, the Voyager 1 space probe failed to respond to the command.
It was at that moment that NASA realized that its 47-year-old space probe was experiencing a new set of challenges. NASA engineers spent two days troubleshooting the challenge to figure out what caused the actual issue.
Note that the Voyager 1 is currently exploring space at about 25 billion kilometers (15.3 billion miles) away from Earth. Hence, it will take roughly 23 hours for NASA to send a command to the space probe and receive a response in the next 23 hours. Despite the communication signal moving at the speed of light, it still takes this long to establish contact with the spacecraft.
On October 18, the interstellar space probe failed to respond to a command sent by NASA on October 16. Despite not receiving a response nearly after 48 hours, NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) continued to scout for the signal. When it finally received a signal, it realized it came on a different frequency band.
NASA scientists suggested that the heater may have activated the spacecraft’s built-in fault protection. The system is designed in such a way that if the instrument attempts to draw excess power, the spacecraft will automatically switch off other less important systems to serve energy.
However, NASA engineers believed that the X-band radio transmitter, which is Voyager 1’s main communication transmitter to Earth actually caused the recent trouble. The engineers believed that the fault protection system must have lowered the data transmission rate and altered the X-band signal.
How NASA engineers are working to solve the recent issue
To troubleshoot the recent issue, NASA engineers used the DSN to establish another connection with the probe. The re-established connection stabilized the signal as the engineers studied the challenge.
However, the team was shocked to discover that no communication signal was received from the spacecraft. NASA assumed that the X-band transmitter may have disrupted the operations of the fault protection system even further.
Hence, the space probe would switch to its S-band transmitter which uses less energy. However, signals received from the S-band transmitter were much fainter as Voyager 1 has not used it since 1981. The team thought that they could not detect the signal from the current location of Voyager 1.
However, NASA engineers working on the DSN reestablished connection with the S-band transmitter and sent another command to the spacecraft on October 22. The sent signal proved that the transmitter was working perfectly.
The crew will probably not switch to the X-band transmitter until they figure out the actual cause of the initial problem. Thankfully, troubleshooting is still going on and NASA engineers hope that the spacecraft will return to its normal mode of operation as soon as possible.
