The story of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 is simply fascinating. Although counterintuitive, Voyager 2 was the first to launch into space on August 20, 1977, while Voyager 1 began its journey a few weeks later on September 5, 1977. This means that as we approach Both will celebrate 48 years of spaceflight at the end of the summer , i.e. almost five decades, during which they managed to keep it in operation despite several technical problems.

As always we are talking about these “sister” probesI think it’s worth taking a moment to remember that we’re talking about a masterpiece of engineering, perhaps not so much because of the complexity of its systems, but rather because of the quality of its design and the way those responsible knew how to foresee the many problems that might arise in the future, and thus predicting their solution.

This explains to us that despite the incidents I mentioned above, so far mission control from Earth has been able to resolve them despite their big handicap, which is of course the unavailability of physical access to the probes. And so the missions, which were originally supposed to last five years, are still operational today. Until the beginning of the year, the most recent scare involved Voyager 2 last summer after a command sent from Earth changed its orientation and prevented communication. Fortunately, a few months later it was possible to restore communication and also update its software so that this problem does not happen again.

I say by the beginning of the year because, as we told you in February, There was a problem at the beginning of February with the data sent by Voyager 1 and the information it sent back made no sense. Fortunately, in this case, the two-way communication remained fully functional, so the engineering teams have since been able to work to identify the source of the problem and then attempt to resolve it.

Hopeful news was already coming in April, because at that time the probe started sending the correct basic data, and the good news is that, as reported by the US space agency, Voyager 1 is already sending back the correct data from the four instruments it carries. And why is this data so important? Well, because both probes are the only ones capable of collecting information directly from interstellar space.

Still there are some pending tasks aimed at solving the consequences of the problem that caused the sending of meaningless data. Therefore, the software of the three computers integrated into the probe will soon be updated to guarantee proper synchronization when executing commands sent from Earth.

Images: NASA/Caltech