NASA ’s age Voyager 1 spacecraft has resumed unconstipated operations , beam useful science data back home from about 24.9 billion klick ( 15.4 billion miles ) off .

The Voyager probes , launched in 1977 , have perform spectacularly well over nearly half a century , fly past various planetary bodies and studying them on their means to the tabu compass of the Solar System . But time , and a fall supply of fuel , have take their toll on the spacecrafts in recent year , forcing NASA toshut down scientific instrumentsin order to keep them run .

Several glitches have taken lieu over the last twelvemonth too , with Voyager 1sending back nonsensefor six calendar month before NASA was capable to sort the payoff . In the latest error to hit the probe , on October 19 it bar send off signals back to Earth at all .

However , the impressive ballistic capsule ’s onboard computer was able to work the place by switching to using a transmitter that had not been usedsince 1981 .

“ The flight squad surmise that Voyager 1 ’s fault protective cover system was triggered doubly more and that it turn off the 10 - band transmitter and switched to a second radio transmitter called the S - band , ” NASA ’s Tony Greicius explained in theVoyager Blogsoon after the vector was confirm to be work .

“ While the S - band uses less index , Voyager 1 had not used it to communicate with Earth since 1981 . It uses a dissimilar absolute frequency than the X - band transmitters signaling is importantly fainter . The flight team was not certain the S - isthmus could be find at Earth due to the space vehicle ’s distance , but engineers with the Deep Space internet were able to get hold it . ”

Though the sender was exploit , Voyager was still not to the full usable . But inan update , NASA has confirmed that they were able-bodied to reactivate the cristal - band transmitter , and the spacecraft resumed collecting information with its four stay power - up science instruments in the workweek of November 18 . The squad is now attempting to fall the spacecraft to the stipulation it was in before the error rise , including doing a reset of the system of rules that synchronizes Voyager 1 ’s onboard computers .

With a little luck , there ’s a few more years of life in the old dog yet .