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NASA has Has done this once again. NASA's 47-year-old Voyager-1 spacecraft recently contacted Earth through a radio transmitter. NASA has established contact with a radio antenna that has not been used since 1981. NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California established contact with it on October 24. This spacecraft was launched in 1977. As the spacecraft aged, the team gradually shut down its engines to conserve power.
The Voyager-1 spacecraft is 24 billion kilometers away from Earth and is continuously sending us data. This spacecraft is the farthest spacecraft from Earth. It has gone beyond the heliosphere. Their instrument samples interstellar space. It stopped broadcasting on 16 October, causing a communication disruption. The shutdown was believed to have been caused by a fault protection system of the spacecraft. It turns off some systems when power consumption is high.
According to NASA, it takes approximately 23 hours for a message to arrive. That's how much time it takes for a message to travel from Earth to Voyager 1 and back. When NASA scientists sent the command on 16 October, they did not get the reply till 18 October. A day later, contact with Voyager-1 was completely lost. The team's investigation found that Voyager 1's systems had turned off the spacecraft's low-power transmitter to conserve power.
Voyager-1 has two radio transmitters. But only one has been used over the years. This is called 'X band'. However, another transmitter called 'S Band' uses a different frequency, which has not been used since 1981. Currently, NASA has decided not to switch back to X-band transmitters. It may take a lot of time to get things right.
