(CNN):After coming up with a novel way to address a communication issue on board humanity's farthest distant spacecraft, Voyager 1, NASA engineers have received interpretable data from the spacecraft for the first time in five months.
Currently 46 years old, Voyager 1 is situated approximately 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth. Over the past few years, the probe has exhibited various anomalies and indications of aging.
The most recent problem Voyager 1 encountered started in November 2023 when the telemetry modulation unit of the flight data system started transmitting an unintelligible repetitive sequence of code.
The science instrument data of Voyager 1 is gathered by its flight data system, which then combines it with engineering data to represent the spacecraft's current condition.
On March 1, the team instructed Voyager 1 to execute various software sequences through a command known as a "poke," in an attempt to identify the source of the malfunction.
The crew discovered on March 3 that certain flight data system behavior was distinct from the other jumbled data.
On April 18, engineers transmitted a radio signal to the probe instructing it to move the code to a new position in the system's memory
The crew anticipates getting science data from Voyager 1 in a few weeks and is eager to learn what information it holds.
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