NASA Reestablishes , Connection With Distant , Voyager 1 Space Probe.
The news comes after engineers at
the agency worked for months
attempting to fix the 46-year-old probe.
In December, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
said that the probe, now a staggering 15 billion miles
away from Earth, was transmitting gibberish code. .
On April 23, the JPL announced that
the team was once again receiving
usable data from the spacecraft.
Currently, the probe is only
transmitting data regarding the status
of the ship's engineering systems.
The next step is to enable
the spacecraft to begin
returning science data again, JPL statement, via 'The Guardian'.
'The Guardian' reports that Voyager 1 has been in
operation for nearly half a century after launching
in 1977 with the goal of studying Jupiter and Saturn.
In August of 2012, Voyager crossed into
interstellar space, becoming the first
human-made object to leave the solar system.
The probe is currently traveling at a staggering
36,800 miles per hour through space.
NASA plans to collect data from the two
Voyager spacecraft for a few more years,
but the space agency expects to lose
contact with the probes within the next decade