Communication with the Voyager 1 spacecraft, the most distant human creation from Earth, has been restored after five months, the American space agency (NASA) announced yesterday Monday.

In particular, Voyager-1 began sending useful information back to Earth after five months of communicating through incomprehensible data.

NASA’s spacecraft, which has been in space for 46 years and is humanity’s most distant object, stopped returning readable data in November. The damage was repaired by engineers.

Voyager currently only sends back data pertaining to the status of its onboard systems.
Voyager-1 is more than 24 billion kilometers away with its radio messages taking 22.5 hours to reach us.

“The Voyager-1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the status of its onboard systems,” NASA said in a statement.

“The next step is to get the spacecraft to start returning science data again.”
Voyager-1 was launched from Earth in 1977 to explore the outer planets. Continuing its mission, however, it moved into the heliosphere in 2012, and now remains in interstellar space, which contains gas, dust and magnetic fields from other stars. The failure is due to a damaged chip.

This prevented Voyager’s computers from accessing a vital piece of software code used to transfer information for transmission to Earth.

Voyager-1 departed Earth on September 5, 1977, a few days after its sister spacecraft, Voyager-2.

The pair’s primary goal was to investigate the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with the mission completed in 1989. They then headed into deep space.

Their power comes from radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which convert the heat from plutonium fission into electricity. The continuous decay process means that the generators produce slightly less energy each year.