A radio transmitter that's been a backup for decades has helped reestablish communication with Voyager 1 after NASA lost touch for days. The blackout began on Oct. 19, CNN reports. The team suspects the fault protection system was triggered, causing the system to turn off the X-band transmitter and move communication to the older, weaker S-band transmitter that uses less power. "Voyager 1 had not used it to communicate with Earth since 1981," NASA said.
NASA won't try to turn the main transmitter back on until the cause of the switch is determined, which could take weeks. Complicating the effort is the fact that Voyager 1 is beyond the edge of the solar system, more than 15 billion miles from Earth, making it the most distant human-made object in the universe. It takes 23 hours for commands to reach the spacecraft, per Live Science. NASA has been shutting down components of the 47-year-old craft over time to save power, so that it can keep sending data to Earth. But technical problems are happening more frequently.
In a development that sounds like something earthlings are warned about every winter, the fault protection system kicked in when a command was sent to the Voyager's heater. That may have been because the heater drew too much power. If the main transmitter gets working again, Voyager 1 might be able to tell NASA what happened. (The spacecraft gave NASA a similar scare earlier this year.)
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