Don’t worry, Voyager 1 is still floating among the stars and communicating with NASA officials, even though it is floating in interstellar space. Celebrating the craft’s 45th anniversary on Tuesday, researchers on the Voyager mission were able to solve a flaw in ancient technology. Now, the mission control center is in contact again with the satellite, which crossed into interstellar space 10 years ago. As of this month, the craft was more than 10 billion miles from Earth.
Susan Dodd, Voyager Project Manager, “We are pleased to have restored telemetry” He said in a press release. “We’ll do a full-memory read of AACS and look at everything it was doing. That will help us try to diagnose what caused the telemetry problem in the first place. So we’re cautiously optimistic, but we still have more investigation to do.”
Earlier this year, Voyager 1 began sending out garbled data, which made scientists fear the worst. It appears that this has been fixed for now. However, officials believe that both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 could be out of service by 2025.
“Four years – that was the main mission,” Dodd said in a separate statement. “But if an engineer had the option to put in a part that was 10 percent higher but wasn’t something that was required for a four-year job, he would go ahead and do it. And they wouldn’t necessarily tell management.”
The Voyager mission is designed to explore the farthest reaches of our solar system and has exceeded its expected lifespan. The craft also carries a gold log with images of wildlife on Earth and members of the human race – you know, in case aliens come into contact with it. The legendary record also includes a copy of “Johnny B. Good” by Chuck Berry and a letter from then-President Jimmy Carter.
“We hope one day, having solved the problems we are facing, we will join a community of galactic civilizations,” Carter is reported to say in the log. “This record represents our hope, determination, and goodwill in a vast and wonderful world.”
For more images from the Webb Space Telescope and other cosmic stories, check out the ComicBook Invasion Center here.
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