NASA‘s Voyager 1 spacecraft, the most distant human-made object from Earth, has resumed normal operations after a pause in communications last month. The probe had unexpectedly shut down its primary radio transmitter, called the X-band transmitter, and had turned on the much weaker S-band transmitter. Due to the spacecraft’s distance from Earth (about 24.9 billion kilometers), this change prevented the mission team from downloading scientific data and engineering status information from the spacecraft. The X-band transmitter had been turned off by the spacecraft’s fault protection system when engineers activated a heater on the spacecraft. Historically, if the fault protection system … Continue reading NASA’s Voyager 1 Returns to Full Operations After Signal Loss While Operating on Razor-Thin Power Margins