NASA’s Voyager 1 jumpstarts radio transmitter unused since 1981 to ‘phone home’

The 47-year-old NASA Voyager 1 fell back on a radio transmitter it hadn’t used since 1981 to ping home base after a technical issue caused a days-long communication stall between Earth and the farthest-ever recorded spacecraft.

The Voyager has been floating further and further away since its historic launch in 1977 and along with its twin craft, the Voyager 2, the pair are the only two spacecraft to operate in interstellar space, the region between stars.

Together, the pair have explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and 48 of their moons and even carry a message from Earth on a phonograph record should they encounter any form of life in distant space, according to NASA.

The Voyager 1 is the farthest spacecraft from Earth, extending far beyond even Pluto’s orbit and outside the heliosphere.

Now having strayed 15.4 billion miles away from Earth, its time is likely coming to a close, but the inaugural spacecraft isn’t going down without a fight.

The Deep Space Network engineers still operating Voyager 1 from home have steadily been turning off components to conserve power as long as possible so that the spacecraft can continue to send untapped science data from the depths of the solar system.

The communication issue is one of several to have plagued the aging spacecraft in recent months, but the team keeps finding innovative solutions to press onward.

The blackout was originally sparked by a heater malfunction on Oct. 16, which in itself is a double-edged sword. The heater is used to warm parts of the Voyager that have sustained radiation damage in interstellar space, but doing so degrades the performance of its components, Bruce Waggoner, the Voyager mission assurance manager, told CNN.

The spacecraft suddenly shut down all nonessential systems when the heater was turned on, forcing it to draw more power than it was capable of.

The spacecraft shut down its X-band, one of its two radio transmitters. Its other transmitter, S-band, hasn’t been used since 1981 because of its weaker signal. Even so, the S-band still had the capability to reach Earth, the Voyager 1 team confirmed on Oct. 24, and will be used as the primary transmitter until the X-band is back up.

While the switch in transmitters is a handy hack it’s not a permanent solution.

“The S-band signal is too weak to use long-term,” Waggoner said. “So far, the team has not been able to use it to get telemetry (information about the health and status of the spacecraft), let alone science data. But it allows us to at least send commands and make sure the spacecraft is still pointed at Earth.”