NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is doing science again after problem

DALLAS – NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is sending science data again.

Voyager 1's four instruments are back in business after a computer problem in November, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this week. The team first received meaningful information again from Voyager 1 in April, and recently commanded it to start studying its environment again.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is drifting through interstellar space, or the space between star systems. Before reaching this region, the spacecraft discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and several of Saturn’s moons. Its instruments are designed to collect information about plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles.

Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) from Earth. Its twin Voyager 2 — also in interstellar space — is more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) away.

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This story was first published on June 14, 2024. It was updated on June 17, 2024 to correct the metric distance Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft are from Earth.

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