A miracle occurred with Voyager 1: what happened 24.9 billion kilometers away from Earth?

The NASA spacecraft "Voyager 1" has resumed its operations, regularly transmitting scientific data back to Earth from a distance of approximately 24.9 billion kilometers, reports IFLScience.

For nearly five decades, the probes launched in 1977 have explored various celestial objects on their journey to the outer reaches of the Solar System. However, dwindling fuel reserves forced NASA to disable most of the scientific instruments to allow the spacecraft to continue its voyage.

Over the past year, "Voyager 1" also experienced several technical malfunctions, during which the spacecraft sent meaningless signals to Earth for six months. During the latest malfunction on October 19, the spacecraft completely stopped sending any signals home.

This issue was resolved by the onboard computer, which switched to a transmitter that had not been used since 1981.

"The protection system on 'Voyager 1' activated twice and shut down the X-band transmitter, switching the spacecraft to a secondary S-band transmitter," said Tony Grayson from NASA.

He emphasized that the S-band transmitter indeed consumes less power, but it had not been used by the spacecraft for a long time. Additionally, this signal is significantly weaker, so the team was uncertain whether it could be detected from Earth. However, the engineers at the Deep Space Network were able to achieve this.

In the latest statement, NASA confirmed that they successfully restarted the X-band transmitter. The spacecraft has also been able to resume data collection using four scientific instruments that are still operational.

At this point, scientists are working to restore the spacecraft to the condition it was in before the last malfunction.

Experts say that with a bit of luck, the spacecraft could continue to operate for several more years.

It is worth mentioning that 35 years ago, the "Voyager 2" probe took the first-ever close-up image of Neptune. The photograph of Neptune became the last image of a Solar System object for one of NASA's most distant probes in space.