Voyager has come to its senses, it is emitting intelligible signals again!

For months, NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe broadcast incomprehensible, erroneous messages, and perhaps it was not an exaggeration to think that the human-made object farthest from Earth was irretrievably destroyed. However, Voyager 1 is a durable structure – as it has started sending interpretable data to mission control again – Science Alert reports on the developments. The miraculous “resurrection” was announced by NASA on Monday, ending the period beginning on November 14, 2023, when Voyager 1 could only send back an incomprehensible message in response to the instructions it received from Earth.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers traced the problem back to a faulty chip back in March, after which they managed to apply a software solution that accommodated the limited memory of the spacecraft’s 46-year-old computer system and restored communication with the structure’s inner workings.

NASA officials said the next goal is to prepare Voyager 1 to send back science data.

Voyager 1, launched in 1977, entered the history books as the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space in 2012, now more than 24 billion km from our planet. Communication with Voyager 1 thus takes about 22.5 hours one way. The well-known spacecraft’s companion, Voyager 2, also ventured beyond the Solar System, which it achieved in 2018.

As Mültkor writes, a large gold-plated sound record placed in an aluminum case was also recorded on the space probes, similar to the Pioneer-10 and Pioneer-11 space probes launched a decade and a half before the Voyager missions, only this has now been supplemented with music, speech and a with a player in addition to just pictures.

The cover of the disc has illustrated instructions describing how to play it, while the probe contains a gramophone and a pickup. The disc was selected by the American astronomer Carl Sagan, including, among other things, the messages of the then US president, Jimmy Carter, and the UN Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim, in written form, as well as greetings in fifty-five different languages, including Hungarian. In addition to human speech, the sound of dolphins, the roar of the wind, the growl of a tractor engine and the sound of a kiss were included on the record.

The photos on the disc are intended to show the positive aspects of the Earth, so there are no images of war, misery or disease. Due to the limited space, the presentation of works of art and religions is also missing. The collection, consisting of a total of 116 images, depicts the Earth, the human race and the solar system in various themes, while also capturing scenes of everyday life. The 90-minute audio material recorded on the disc includes music selected from the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky, as well as jazz and folk music recordings.

Although the Voyagers’ energy sources are expected to run out after 2025, after that they will passively but endlessly continue their silent drift through the Milky Way, carrying the traces of human civilization into the cosmos. Who knows who will catch them one day and what will be the fate of humanity by then.

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)