NASA officials said a communication lapse put them out of contact with the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which later this month will have traversed one light-day — or the distance light travels in 24 hours — in its nearly 50-year journey.
The space agency said it could not reach Voyager 1 on Oct. 18-19, and NASA’s Deep Space Network couldn’t detect a radio signal coming from the vessel that is 16 billion miles away from Earth.
The issue resolved itself on Oct. 20, NASA said, although engineers said they still have no clear idea about what caused the break in contact.
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“This is the first time we’ve seen the spacecraft do something like this, but we are also at a point in the mission where we have to expect the unexpected,” Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in a statement. “We’re relieved to be back in contact with Voyager 1 and are eager to understand what happened.”
The agency said that on Nov. 18, Voyager 1 will reach 16.09 billion miles from Earth, or the equivalent of one light-day. The spacecraft has already traveled farther than any other manmade vessel in human history since it was launched in September 1977.
Officials said radio communications with Voyager 1 take one day to reach the vessel, plus another day before the response can be received.
“If you want to say ’hello’ to Voyager, you send your message and then you go home and you wait two days before you finally get a response,” Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, said in a statement.
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