NASA Turns On Backup Radio Not Used Since 1981 To Ping Voyager 1 15 Billion Miles Away

NASA reconnected with its Voyager 1 spacecraft more than 15 billion miles from Earth by flipping the switch on a backup radio not used on the spacecraft since 1981. The space agency reported Voyager 1 recently turned off one of its two radio transmitters, and the team is currently working to figure out what caused it.

It has been a rough year for the Voyager 1 spacecraft. The spacecraft began the year sending incomprehensible gibberish to the team back on Earth because of an issue that arose in November 2023. It took five months of investigating the issue before the team finally figured out a single chip responsible for storing a portion of flight data system memory was no longer operational.

The team devised a solution, and was able to once again establish communication with Voyager 1 in April. Now, Voyager 1 is once again experiencing communication hiccups, with NASA remarking it could be days to weeks before the team can identify the underlying cause.

According to a NASA blog post, the transmitter shut-off may have been prompted by Voyager’s fault protection system, which autonomously responds to onboard issues. An example given by the space agency involved if the spacecraft overdraws its power supply, fault protection will conserve power by turning off systems that are not essential for keeping Voyager flying.

NASA reported that on October 16, the flight team sent a command to one of Voyager’s heaters. While the spacecraft should still have plenty of power to operate the heater, the command instead triggered the fault protection system. The team did not learn of the issue until October 18, when the Deep Space Network could not detect Voyager 1’s signal.

On October 19, the spacecraft stopped communicating entirely. The flight team reported it suspected the spacecraft’s fault protection system was triggered two more times, and that it turned off the X-band transmitter, and switched to a second radio transmitter called the S-band. While the S-band consumes less power, it had not been used since 1981, while also transmitting a much fainter signal. The flight team was not sure if the S-band would be able to be detected some 15 billion miles from Earth, but the Deep Space Network was able to locate it.

NASA stated it will leave the S-band on until it is able to determine what triggered the fault protection system. The team is currently working to gather more data that might help them figure out what happened and hopefully return Voyager 1 to normal operations.