WASHINGTON — Four instruments aboard NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft are transmitting science data for the first time since a computer malfunction last November, and scientists hope the mission will continue for another decade or so.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced on June 13 that the spacecraft’s four instruments that measure plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles in interstellar space have begun transmitting data again. Two of the instruments started up shortly after a command was sent to the spacecraft on May 19, but the other two required what JPL called “additional work” to resume operations.
The instrument had been offline since November 2023, when a malfunction onboard the spacecraft caused it to return garbled data. A “tiger team” of engineers traced the problem to a corrupted memory chip in one of the spacecraft’s computers and rewrote the software to avoid using the chip. The efforts restored communications with the spacecraft in April.
“The Tiger team was initially able to reprogram and relocate the code for the engineering portion of the data mode coming from the spacecraft,” Voyager project scientist Linda Spilker said at the Exoplanet Analysis Group meeting on June 13, when she announced the instruments were functioning again. “We are currently acquiring science data from all four of Voyager 1’s science instruments.”
“This is the first flight software update to a spacecraft in interstellar space,” she added. “The last time we made any major changes to the flight software was before launch.” Voyager 1 launched in 1977.
Now that the spacecraft’s computers are working again, the main factor limiting the lifespan of Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, is dwindling power levels. Each spacecraft is losing about 4 watts per year due to degradation of its plutonium-238 power supply and the thermocouples that convert that degradation into electricity.
Mission controllers have responded to the loss of power by turning off nonessential systems, such as heaters that kept instruments and other parts warm. “We have both power and thermal concerns as the spacecraft begins to cool,” Spilker said.
She said that at some point the mission will have to start powering down its instruments itself, but that she expects the spacecraft can continue to operate possibly into the next decade.
“With any luck, the Voyager spacecraft may be able to keep collecting data into the 2030s,” she says. If Voyager 1 makes it to 2035, it will be 200 astronomical units from the sun, or about 30 billion kilometers away. Currently, it’s more than 24 billion kilometers away.
“Right now, our focus is to get to 2027,” she said. “That will be 50 years.Number It’s the anniversary of the launch of the Voyager spacecraft.”
The announcement that Voyager 1’s instruments are transmitting data again JPL announces death of Ed StoneStone served as Voyager’s project scientist from the mission’s launch in 1972 until 2022, when he retired and was succeeded by Spilker. Stone, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, also served as Caltech’s president from 1991 to 2001.
“Ed Stone has often said during the flybys that the alignment of planets was a rare opportunity, and he seized it,” she said of the “Grand Tour” orbit that allowed the Voyager spacecraft to pass Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. “I would add that there are still rare opportunities for both Voyagers, and Ed will continue to seize them.”