Hi, It’s Me”: NASA’s Voyager 1 Sends Signal from 15 Billion Miles Away

The spaceship Voyager 1 stopped transmitting readable data to Earth on November 14, 2023, even though it was still receiving commands from controllers. In March, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory identified a malfunctioning chip as the cause and developed a coding fix that worked within the constraints of its 46-year-old computer system.

This enabled the spacecraft to return usable data on its engineering systems. The next goal is to restart the transmission of science data.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 became the first human-made craft to enter the interstellar medium in 2012 and is currently over 15 billion miles away from Earth. Messages sent from Earth take about 22.5 hours to reach the spacecraft.

Its twin, Voyager 2, also left the solar system in 2018. Both spacecraft carry “Golden Records” – gold-plated copper disks intended to communicate the story of our world to extraterrestrial beings.

These include a map of our solar system, a piece of uranium serving as a radioactive clock, and symbolic instructions on how to play the record. The contents, curated by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan, encode images of life on Earth, along with music and sounds playable using an included stylus.

Their power banks are expected to run out after 2025, after which they will continue to drift through the Milky Way in silence. *This story has been published from a syndicated feed, and aside from the headline, has not been edited by NDTV staff.

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