This was reported by Ars Technica, according to a report from Ukrinform.

Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California discovered that the problem with the probe was caused by a small portion of memory. The faulty memory bank resides in Voyager-1’s Flight Data System (FDS), one of three computers on the spacecraft. System functions include packaging Voyager-1 science and engineering data for transmission to Earth via the probe’s telemetry modulation module and radio transmitter.

According to NASA, approximately 3% of the probe’s FDS system memory was damaged, preventing the computer from performing normal operations.

“The team suspects that the chip responsible for storing some of the affected FDS memory is defective. Engineers cannot determine exactly what caused the problem. Two options are possible: The chip may have been hit by an energetic particle from space, or it may have worn out over 46 years.” explained the space agency.

The Voyager-1 probe was launched into space on September 5, 1977, and was approximately 24 billion kilometers from Earth as of November last year.

As reported, on August 5, NASA restored communication with the Voyager-2 space probe, which is more than 19 billion kilometers away from Earth.

Photo: Caltech/NASA-JPL