Perhaps the Voyager 1 spacecraft (“Voyager-1”) will still be able to be brought back “to life”. NASA scientists recently announced changes in the data sent by the probe that give hope of regaining control of the device.

On March 3, the mission team detected activity in a portion of the Flight Data Subsystem (FDS). This activity was different from the rest of the stream of unread data that scientists began receiving months ago. Let us remind you that at the end of 2023, NASA published a message that the probe sent only “binary gibberish” to Earth.

Unfortunately the new signal still has the format that the device uses in normal mode. However, an engineer from the Deep Space Network managed to decode the new signal and discovered that it contained the data of the entire FDS memory.

FDS memory contains code, instructions for what to do, and variables or values ​​used in the code, which can change depending on commands or the status of the spacecraft. The signal also contains scientific or engineering data for the downlink. NASA said the team will compare these readings with those obtained before the problem occurred and identify inconsistencies in code and variables to potentially find the source of the problem.

The new signal itself is the result of one of the scientists’ attempts to bring the device into working order. Specifically, this is a reaction to the command sent on March 1.

Due to the large distance and since Voyager 1 has already moved 24 billion km from Earth, the signal only travels in one direction for almost a day. On March 7, engineers began work on decrypting the data and completed this work on March 10. Perhaps in the near future scientists will be able to regain control of the legendary spacecraft.