News of the Voyager missions - in flight since 1977

[Dave A]

Really incredible that we can still communicate with Voyager 1-  lets hope this continues

[Rick]

A little more detail...

NASA engineers discover why Voyager 1 is sending a stream of gibberish from outside our solar system

For the past five months, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending a steady stream of unreadable gibberish back to Earth. Now, NASA engineers finally know why.

The 46-year-old spacecraft sends regular radio signals as it drifts further from our solar system. But in November 2023, the signals suddenly became garbled, meaning  scientists were unable to read any of its data, and they were left mystified about the fault's origins.

In March, NASA engineers sent a command prompt, or "poke," to the craft to get a readout from its flight data subsystem (FDS) — which packages Voyager 1's science and engineering data before beaming it back to Earth.

After decoding the spacecraft's response, the engineers have found the source of the problem: The FDS's memory has been corrupted.

More: https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/nasa-engineers-discover-why-voyager-1-is-sending-a-stream-of-gibberish-from-outside-our-solar-system

[Rick]

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

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.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/23/voyager-1-transmitting-data-again-after-nasa-remotely-fixes-46-year-old-probe

...and from NASA JPL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-voyager-1-resumes-sending-engineering-updates-to-earth

[Rick]

More Voyager instruments shut down to eke out power supplies
Veteran probes close in on the half century

More science instruments are being shut down on the Voyager probes as engineers attempt to eke out the power and keep them running for years to come.

It should not come as a surprise that NASA is turning off instruments. The shutdowns were already planned to take place as the venerable probes enter the final years of their operational life. The team hopes that if it takes action now, the robotic spacecraft could still be operating with at least one science instrument into the 2030s.

Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem – a suite of three telescopes designed to study cosmic rays, including protons from the galaxy and the Sun, by measuring their energy and flux – was shut down last week. Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is due for deactivation later this month.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/06/voyager_power_down/