Awesome! NASA fixes glitch in the iconic Voyager 1 spacecraft flying 14,623,292,784 miles away

NASA engineers have solved the data glitch in Voyager 1, the 45-year-old space craft investigating the cosmos outside our solar system.

NASA engineers fix ‘data glitch’ on Voyager 1 spacecraft. (NASA)

NASA engineers have repaired the “data glitch” detected on Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is a 45-year-old space explorer investigating the cosmos outside our solar system. Earlier this year in May, Voyager 1's attitude articulation and control system (AACS) that keeps its antenna pointed in the right direction towards Earth started sending weird, garbled telemetry data about its activities and health to mission controllers. However, the Voyager team had tracked down the source of the data glitch and fixed it. “The team has since located the source of the garbled information: The AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago, and the computer corrupted the information,” said Nasa. Voyager 1 is now 14,623,292,784 miles (14.6 billion miles) from Earth.

Suzanne Dodd, project manager for the Voyager program shared her happiness in a press statement and that the team is happy to have the telemetry back. She further shared that the team will do a full memory readout of the AACS and look at everything it's been doing to diagnose the problem that caused the telemetry issue in the first place.

NASA's 2 iconic spaceraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have been exploring our solar system for 45 years. Both the probes are now in interstellar space- the region outside the heliopause, or the bubble of energetic particles and magnetic fields from the Sun.

Interesting facts about Voyager 1 and 2

Voyager 2 was the first to launch on August 20, 1977, followed by Voyager 1 launch on September 5, 1977. But Voyager 1 has outpaced Voyager 2 in their journey into interstellar space. Voyager 1 became the most distant man-made object in space. The Voyager spacecraft was built and operated by a division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory. It is sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.