Transmitter not used since 1981 helps NASA Voyager 1 reconnects with Earth

NASA Voyager 1 spacecraft which lost contact though briefly reconnected with the Earth with the help of a radio transmitter not used since 1981

Washington: NASA Voyager 1 spacecraft which lost contact though briefly reconnected with the Earth with the help of a radio transmitter not used since 1981, the American space agency said.

Voyager 1 became incommunicado on October 16. The NASA engineers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California were able to re-establish contact with the spacecraft on October 24, 2024.

More than 15 billion miles or 24 billion kilometres away, Voyagers 1 and 2 have been flying for more than 47 years and are the only two spacecraft to operate in interstellar space.

NASA said the Voyager 1 report brief interruption in contacts on October 16, and the issue came to light two days later on October 18.

The NASA engineers tried to regain contacts but the command they sent triggered the spacecraft’s fault protection system. Then, on Oct. 19, communication appeared to stop entirely.

The spacecraft typically communicates with Earth using what’s called an X-band radio transmitter, named for the specific frequency it uses. The flight team correctly hypothesized that the fault protection system had lowered the rate at which the transmitter was sending back data, NASA media centre said in a blog post.

This mode requires less power from the spacecraft, but it also changes the X-band signal that the Deep Space Network needs to listen for. Engineers found the signal later that day, and Voyager 1 otherwise seemed to be in a stable state as the team began to investigate what had happened, NASA said.

“The flight team suspected that Voyager 1’s fault protection system was triggered twice more and that it turned off the X-band transmitter and switched to a second radio transmitter called the S-band”, Voyager mission assurance manager, Bruce Waggoner

“While the S-band uses less power, Voyager 1 had not used it to communicate with Earth since 1981. It uses a different frequency than the X-band transmitters signal is significantly fainter. The flight team was not certain the S-band could be detected at Earth due to the spacecraft’s distance, but engineers with the Deep Space Network were able to find it”, he added.

Rather than risk turning the X-band back on before determining what triggered the fault protection system, the team sent a command on Oct. 22 to confirm the S-band transmitter is working. The team is now working to gather information that will help them figure out what happened and return Voyager 1 to normal operations.

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