voyager one live

Voyager 1 is back online! NASA's most distant spacecraft returns data from all 4 instruments

The spacecraft has resumed full science operations after a technical issue began creating complications in November 2023.

All right, everyone — we can all breathe a sigh of relief. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is fully operational once more, with all four science instruments returning usable data to Earth.

The problems began in November 2023, when Voyager 1 lost its ability to "speak" with us. More specifically, it started sending to Earth unintelligible data instead of its normal 0s and 1s of binary code. Of course, Voyager 1 is 46 years old — ancient for a spacecraft — so it wasn't entirely a surprise that its health might be waning. And that's not to mention that it's in entirely uncharted interstellar territory, some 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth. 

Voyager 1's dogged team was determined to not only figure out what went wrong, but also to fix the problem. And they've succeeded! Controllers identified where the issue was located: the flight data subsystem (FDS), used to "package" data to be sent to Earth. Further sleuthing revealed the exact chip causing the problem, which allowed them to find a workaround. After the team relocated the code to a new location in the FDS, Voyager 1 finally sent back intelligible data on April 20, 2024 — but only from two of its four science instruments. Now, just two months later, Voyager 1's remaining two science instruments are back up and running, communicating effectively with mission control on Earth.

Even if Voyager 1 had gone dark for good, however, the mission would still have been a wild success. After it launched in 1977, its primary mission was to study Jupiter and Saturn — that was accomplished by 1980. (Its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2 , went on to study Uranus and Neptune .) But Voyager 1 is on an unstoppable path. Continuing its journey away from Earth, the spacecraft entered interstellar space in 2012, returning crucial data about this mysterious realm.

 — Voyager: 15 incredible images of our solar system (gallery) — Scientists' predictions for the long-term future of the Voyager Golden Records will blow your mind — Ed Stone, who led NASA's iconic Voyager project for 50 years, dies at 88  

Now that Voyager 1 is back online, the team will continue to "touch up" the spacecraft to get it back in top form, including resynchronizing its timekeeping software to execute commands at the right time , as well as performing maintenance on the digital tape recorder that measures plasma waves. And hopefully, Voyager 1 will have a long, happy life ahead.

Get the Space.com Newsletter

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Space.com contributing writer Stefanie Waldek is a self-taught space nerd and aviation geek who is passionate about all things spaceflight and astronomy. With a background in travel and design journalism, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University, she specializes in the budding space tourism industry and Earth-based astrotourism. In her free time, you can find her watching rocket launches or looking up at the stars, wondering what is out there. Learn more about her work at www.stefaniewaldek.com .

Space missions are getting more complex − lessons from Amazon and FedEx can inform satellite and spacecraft management in orbit

James Webb Telescope goes 'extreme' and spots baby stars at the edge of the Milky Way (image)

NASA's 'Hidden Figures' women awarded Congressional Gold Medals

• richlightyear Having traveled 15 billion miles, it is now still only .0025 light years away. The universe is a pretty big place. Reply
• CrispyBokeh Oh, I didn't know. I thought it was pretty much at the edge of the universe already, and that space was tiny Reply
• billslugg Voyager 1 is at the edge of the explored universe. Space is tiny until Dad makes you shuck enough sweet corn to fill a bushel basket. Reply

billslugg said: Voyager 1 is at the edge of the explored universe. Space is tiny until Dad makes you shuck enough sweet corn to fill a bushel basket.

• yossarian22 This is the energizer bunny of space crafts. It just keeps going and going even when NASA believes they have heard the last from it. Pretty good for a vessel with the computing power that's less than the average electronic car key of today. Reply
• DanielJ Except now it wants to be referred to as 'Vger'. Reply

DanielJ said: Except now it wants to be referred to as 'Vger'.

• Questioner Voyager 1 would be an excellent place to measure the orbit diameters of Solar system planets using its distances to and trigonometry with angles from the background stars. A fine place to differentiate if any discrepancies of distance occur from mass field internal frames of reference (we measure) and its more largely mass field external frame of reference. Keep that 46 y/o puppy 'right now' relevant, with informative experiments. Come on people, let’s do some science. Reply

NapmasterG said: Oh that’s just great…and my daughter’s name is Ailea…and she wants to be astronaut…

• Questioner Do they have to speed up signal frequencies to communicate with Voyager 1 due to our time dilation so far inside to the Sun's mass field? Reply
• View All 17 Comments

Most Popular

• 2 The largest volcano on Mars may sit above a 1,000-mile magma pool. Could Olympus Mons erupt again?
• 3 2nd Kuiper Belt? Our solar system may be much larger than thought
• 4 AI is on the hunt for dark matter
• 5 Earth had Saturn-like rings 466 million years ago, new study suggests

Voyager 1 Distance from Earth

Voyager 1 distance from sun, voyager 1 one-way light time, voyager 1 cosmic ray data, voyager 2 distance from the earth, voyager 2 distance from the sun, voyager 2 one-way light time, voyager 2 cosmic ray data.

Inside NASA's 5-month fight to save the Voyager 1 mission in interstellar space

After working for five months to re-establish communication with the farthest-flung human-made object in existence, NASA announced this week that the Voyager 1 probe had finally phoned home.

For the engineers and scientists who work on NASA’s longest-operating mission in space, it was a moment of joy and intense relief.

“That Saturday morning, we all came in, we’re sitting around boxes of doughnuts and waiting for the data to come back from Voyager,” said Linda Spilker, the project scientist for the Voyager 1 mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We knew exactly what time it was going to happen, and it got really quiet and everybody just sat there and they’re looking at the screen.”

When at long last the spacecraft returned the agency’s call, Spilker said the room erupted in celebration.

“There were cheers, people raising their hands,” she said. “And a sense of relief, too — that OK, after all this hard work and going from barely being able to have a signal coming from Voyager to being in communication again, that was a tremendous relief and a great feeling.”

The problem with Voyager 1 was first detected in November . At the time, NASA said it was still in contact with the spacecraft and could see that it was receiving signals from Earth. But what was being relayed back to mission controllers — including science data and information about the health of the probe and its various systems — was garbled and unreadable.

That kicked off a monthslong push to identify what had gone wrong and try to save the Voyager 1 mission.

Spilker said she and her colleagues stayed hopeful and optimistic, but the team faced enormous challenges. For one, engineers were trying to troubleshoot a spacecraft traveling in interstellar space , more than 15 billion miles away — the ultimate long-distance call.

“With Voyager 1, it takes 22 1/2 hours to get the signal up and 22 1/2 hours to get the signal back, so we’d get the commands ready, send them up, and then like two days later, you’d get the answer if it had worked or not,” Spilker said.

The team eventually determined that the issue stemmed from one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers. Spilker said a hardware failure, perhaps as a result of age or because it was hit by radiation, likely messed up a small section of code in the memory of the computer. The glitch meant Voyager 1 was unable to send coherent updates about its health and science observations.

NASA engineers determined that they would not be able to repair the chip where the mangled software is stored. And the bad code was also too large for Voyager 1's computer to store both it and any newly uploaded instructions. Because the technology aboard Voyager 1 dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, the computer’s memory pales in comparison to any modern smartphone. Spilker said it’s roughly equivalent to the amount of memory in an electronic car key.

The team found a workaround, however: They could divide up the code into smaller parts and store them in different areas of the computer’s memory. Then, they could reprogram the section that needed fixing while ensuring that the entire system still worked cohesively.

That was a feat, because the longevity of the Voyager mission means there are no working test beds or simulators here on Earth to test the new bits of code before they are sent to the spacecraft.

“There were three different people looking through line by line of the patch of the code we were going to send up, looking for anything that they had missed,” Spilker said. “And so it was sort of an eyes-only check of the software that we sent up.”

The hard work paid off.

NASA reported the happy development Monday, writing in a post on X : “Sounding a little more like yourself, #Voyager1.” The spacecraft’s own social media account responded , saying, “Hi, it’s me.”

So far, the team has determined that Voyager 1 is healthy and operating normally. Spilker said the probe’s scientific instruments are on and appear to be working, but it will take some time for Voyager 1 to resume sending back science data.

Voyager 1 and its twin, the Voyager 2 probe, each launched in 1977 on missions to study the outer solar system. As it sped through the cosmos, Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn, studying the planets’ moons up close and snapping images along the way.

Voyager 2, which is 12.6 billion miles away, had close encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and continues to operate as normal.

In 2012, Voyager 1 ventured beyond the solar system , becoming the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, or the space between stars. Voyager 2 followed suit in 2018.

Spilker, who first began working on the Voyager missions when she graduated college in 1977, said the missions could last into the 2030s. Eventually, though, the probes will run out of power or their components will simply be too old to continue operating.

Spilker said it will be tough to finally close out the missions someday, but Voyager 1 and 2 will live on as “our silent ambassadors.”

Both probes carry time capsules with them — messages on gold-plated copper disks that are collectively known as The Golden Record . The disks contain images and sounds that represent life on Earth and humanity’s culture, including snippets of music, animal sounds, laughter and recorded greetings in different languages. The idea is for the probes to carry the messages until they are possibly found by spacefarers in the distant future.

“Maybe in 40,000 years or so, they will be getting relatively close to another star,” Spilker said, “and they could be found at that point.”

Denise Chow is a science and space reporter for NBC News.

Interstellar Mission

Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in August 2012 and is the most distant human-made object in existence.

Mission Statistics

Launch Date

Sept. 5, 1977

About the mission

Voyager 1 reached interstellar space in August 2012 and is the most distant human-made object in existence. Launched just shortly after its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, in 1977, Voyager 1 explored the Jovian and Saturnian systems discovering new moons, active volcanoes and a wealth of data about the outer solar system.

Voyagers 1 and 2 were designed to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that occurs only once in 176 years and remain the most well traveled spacecraft in history. Both spacecraft carry a sort of time capsule called the Golden Record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the story of our world to extraterrestrials.

Instruments

• Imaging system
• Infrared interferometer spectrometer
• Ultraviolet spectrometer
• Triaxial fluxgate magnetometer
• Plasma spectrometer
• Low-energy charged particles detectors
• Cosmic Ray System (CRS)
• Photopolarimeter System (PPS)
• Plasma Wave System (PWS)

Mission Highlights

Sept. 1, 2013

Interactive 3D model of Voyager 1. View the full interactive experience at Eyes on the Solar System .

• › Mission Website
• › Fact Sheet
• › JPL History
• › Voyager 1 Information on Solar System Exploration
• › NASA Mission Page
• › Voyager 2 Information on National Space Science Data Center

Voyager 1 and 2: The Interstellar Mission

An image of Neptune taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

NASA has beautiful photos of every planet in our solar system. We even have images of faraway Neptune , as you can see in the photo above.

Neptune is much too distant for an astronaut to travel there with a camera. So, how do we have pictures from distant locations in our solar system? Our photographers were two spacecraft, called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2!

An artist’s rendering of one of the Voyager spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft launched from Earth in 1977. Their mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn —and beyond to the outer planets of our solar system. This was a big task. No human-made object had ever attempted a journey like that before.

The two spacecraft took tens of thousands of pictures of Jupiter and Saturn and their moons. The pictures from Voyager 1 and 2 allowed us to see lots of things for the first time. For example, they captured detailed photos of Jupiter's clouds and storms, and the structure of Saturn's rings .

Image of storms on Jupiter taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

Voyager 1 and 2 also discovered active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io , and much more. Voyager 2 also took pictures of Uranus and Neptune. Together, the Voyager missions discovered 22 moons.

Since then, these spacecraft have continued to travel farther away from us. Voyager 1 and 2 are now so far away that they are in interstellar space —the region between the stars. No other spacecraft have ever flown this far away.

Where will Voyager go next?

Watch this video to find out what's beyond our solar system!

Both spacecraft are still sending information back to Earth. This data will help us learn about conditions in the distant solar system and interstellar space.

The Voyagers have enough fuel and power to operate until 2025 and beyond. Sometime after this they will not be able to communicate with Earth anymore. Unless something stops them, they will continue to travel on and on, passing other stars after many thousands of years.

Each Voyager spacecraft also carries a message. Both spacecraft carry a golden record with scenes and sounds from Earth. The records also contain music and greetings in different languages. So, if intelligent life ever find these spacecraft, they may learn something about Earth and us as well!

A photo of the golden record that was sent into space on both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

More about our universe!

Where does interstellar space begin?

Searching for other planets like ours

Play Galactic Explorer!

If you liked this, you may like:

Voyager 1 Trajectory through the Solar System

• Released Thursday, August 31, 2017
• Visualizations by:
• Tom Bridgman

Visualization centered on the Voyager 1 trajectory through the solar system.

A slightly sped-up version of the Voyager 1 visualization above, reducing the time for the Voyagers to cross the asteroid belt.

• Solar System

Please give credit for this item to: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

• Tom Bridgman  (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
• Kathalina Tran  (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
• Genna Duberstein  (USRA)
• Scott Wiessinger  (USRA)

Project support

• Laurence Schuler  (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
• Ian Jones  (ADNET Systems, Inc.)

Release date

This page was originally published on Thursday, August 31, 2017. This page was last updated on Friday, August 2, 2024 at 3:59 PM EDT.

• Voyager @ 40
• Voyager Retrospective

Datasets used

Planetary ephemerides SPICE kernel

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.

Hubble’s Brand New Image of Jupiter

Where is the edge of the solar system, voyager 2 trajectory through the solar system, revisiting the pale blue dot at 30, you may also like..., no results., an error occurred. please reload this page and try again..

Getting location...

Configure your location so TheSkyLive can provide accurate information about what you can see in the sky.

Ephemeris Calculator

Compute Voyager 1 ephemerides for any date and time between 01 Jan 2013 and 31 Dec 2099 and display the predicted position in an interactive sky map.

How Far Away is Voyager 1 from Earth?

The distance of Voyager 1 from Earth is currently 24,663,287,487 kilometers, equivalent to 164.863894 Astronomical Units . Light takes 22 hours, 51 minutes and 7.8718 seconds to travel from Voyager 1 and arrive to us.

• Voyager 1 Information on TheSkyLive.com
• Where is Voyager 1?
• How far is Voyager 1 from Earth?
• When does Voyager 1 rise and set?
• Interactive sky map
• Live position tracker

Explore the outer solar system and beyond with the twin Voyager spacecraft using real spacecraft data.

Discover More Topics From NASA