Humanity’s most distant spacecraft is glitching out—again—and engineers are having quite a difficult time solving the problem. Voyager 1, what are we going to do with you?
NASA’s Voyager team has rolled out important measures in an attempt to further prolong the interstellar journey of the two Voyager spacecraft, which have been transmitting data from deep space since 1977.
In order to contact its interplanetary spacecraft, NASA relies on an array of giant radio antennas spread across different parts of the world. The trusty communications network has been transferring data back and forth for more than 60 years but its antennas are currently operating at capacity, with an anticipated…
NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, currently 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth, has phoned home, essentially telling mission controllers that the recent rumors of its impending death have been greatly exaggerated. The ongoing communications problem, however, remains unresolved.