NASA hasn’t heard from Voyager 1 in a week. The spacecraft cannot be tracked in interstellar space.
After 47 years away from Earth, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is untraceable. NASA has received no news about the mythical space probe for a week, but its antennas continue to listen in the hope that it will appear soon.
A week without news from Voyager 1. Neither NASA nor the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) controllers have made any statement on this matter, but something is wrong with Voyager 1.
Bernard Netherclift, a Voyager enthusiast who closely monitors Deep Space Network (DSN) communications with probes, discovered that NASA’s antennas located at Robledo de Chavela (Madrid), Tidbinbilla (Canberra) and Goldstone (California) were for the last time stopped receiving signals from Voyager 1. week.
First recovery attempt. Located at a distance of 24.7 billion kilometers from Earth, Voyager 1 is the furthest man-made object from our planet. That’s about 23 hours of light, so NASA communications take a full day to travel from Earth to Voyager and back.
While NASA can set up six antennas in Madrid to receive the weak signal from Voyager 1, the Canberra station is the only one with a powerful transmitter capable of covering such a long distance, so JPL made three decisions to attack the crisis:
- Redistribute part of Voyager 2’s tracking time to searching for Voyager 1 from Canberra Station.
- Deprioritize communications with ESA’s XMM-Newton Observatory and NOAA’s DSCOVR weather satellite so that Canberra, as well as Madrid, can spend more time searching for Voyager 1.
- Send 100 kW transmission from the most powerful DSN antenna, 70 meters in diameter, in Canberra. This is the first attempt to return Voyager 1, the result of which we will know in the next few hours.
What’s happening. Without official statements from NASA, it is difficult to say anything. Voyager 1, launched on September 5, 1977, suffered several anomalies in recent months that JPL engineers heroically resolved while battling the probe’s daunting distance, limited energy and ancient software.
Recent problems. Between November 2023 and May 2024, Voyager 1 stopped sending science data due to memory chip damage. After discovering the problem, NASA engineers were able to move the code to other parts of the spacecraft’s meager memory and restore communications.
Most recently, mission controllers had to restart engines that had been idle for decades to orient the craft. The fuel tubes used by Voyager 1 became clogged due to an aging rubber diaphragm, and the probe was in danger of no longer being able to point its antennas toward Earth.
Worst case scenario. If the engines Voyager 1 was currently using also failed and the probe was thrown out of orientation, recovery may not be possible. Teams to fix any problems will not reach you.
If it were an instrument failure, there would be hope for its recovery. Voyager 1’s power source is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which, although producing less power each year due to the natural decay of plutonium-238, still has the energy to continue operating until 2030.
So what now? NASA just sent a blind transmission to Voyager 1, which likely means it was looking through the latest telemetry data it received to record some commands in hopes that it would reach the probe and resume communication.
If he doesn’t show up after this, it could be the end of one of the most legendary space exploration missions. Courtesy of Voyager 2, which continues to operate and also has energy reserves in its RTG to continue collecting data from interstellar space until 2030.
Image | POT
In Hatak | NASA was able to get Voyager 1 to fire up some of its engines that had been idle for decades. Or lose the ship.