NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is doing science again after problemADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN
Fri, June 14, 2024 at 11:40 AM CDT·1 min read
DALLAS (AP) — NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is sending science data again.
Voyager 1's four instruments are back in business after a computer problem in November, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this week. The team first received meaningful information again from Voyager 1 in April, and recently commanded it to start studying its environment again.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is drifting through interstellar space, or the space between star systems. Before reaching this region, the spacecraft discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and several of Saturn’s moons. Its instruments are designed to collect information about plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles.
Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 kilometers) from Earth. Its twin Voyager 2 — also in interstellar space — is more than 12 billion miles (19.31 kilometers) miles away.
No word on the status of Voyager 6, otherwise known as V'Ger.