Fox News: Interstellar Voyager 1 resumes operations after pause in communications with NASA

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Interstellar Voyager 1 resumes operations after pause in communications with NASA

NASA and Voyager 1 resumed communications and operations after a fault protection system switched the interstellar spacecraft's mode of communication to one using less power.......                    ...                        ...You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login that after a pause in communications with Voyager 1 in late October, the spacecraft has regained its voice and resumed regular operations.......Voyager unexpectedly turned off its primary radio transmitter, known as its X-band, before turning on its much weaker S-band transmitter in October.......The interstellar spacecraft is currently located about 15.4 billion miles away from Earth and the S-band had not been used in over 40 years.......Communication between You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login has been spotty at times and the switch to the lower band prevented the Voyager mission team from downloading science data and information about the spacecraft's status.......You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login......Earlier this month, the team was able to reactivate the X-band transmitter and resume collection of data from the four operating You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login onboard Voyager 1.......Now that the data can be collected and communications have resumed, engineers are finishing a few remaining tasks to return Voyager 1 back to the state it was in before the issue came up. One task is to reset the system that synchronizes Voyager 1's three onboard computers.......The S-band was activated by the spacecraft's fault protection system when engineers activated a heater on Voyager 1. The fault protection system determined the probe did not have enough power and automatically turned off systems that were not necessary to keep the spacecraft flying in order to keep providing power to critical systems.......You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login......But in the process, the probes turned off all nonessential systems except for science instruments, NASA said, turning off the X-band and activating the S-band, which uses less power.......Voyager 1 had not used the S-band to communicate with Earth since 1981.......You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login......Voyager 1′s odyssey began in 1977, when the spacecraft and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched on a tour of the gas giant planets of the solar system.......After beaming back dazzling postcard views of Jupiter's giant red spot and Saturn's shimmering rings, Voyager 2 hopscotched to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login Meanwhile, Voyager 1 used Saturn as a gravitational slingshot to power itself past Pluto.......There are 10 science instruments on each spacecraft, and according to NASA, four are currently being used to study the particles, plasma and magnetic fields in interstellar space....

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