After working for five months to re-establish communication with the farthest-flung human-made object in existence, NASA announced this week that the Voyager 1 probe had finally phoned home.For the engineers and scientists who work on NASA’s longest-operating mission in space, it was a moment of joy and intense relief.“That Saturday morning, we all came in, we’re sitting around boxes of doughnuts and waiting for the data to come back from Voyager,” said Linda Spilker, the project scientist for the Voyager 1 mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We knew exactly what time it was going to happen, and it got really quiet and everybody just sat there and they’re looking at the screen.”When at long last the spacecraft returned the agency’s call, Spilker said the room erupted in celebration.“There were cheers, people raising their hands,” she said. “And a sense of relief, too — that OK, after all this hard work and going from barely being able to have a signal coming from Voyager to being in communication again, that was a tremendous relief and a great feeling.” Members of the Voyager flight team celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20. (NASA)The problem with Voyager 1 was first detected in November. At the time, NASA said it was still in contact with the spacecraft and could see that it was receiving signals from Earth. But what was being relayed back to mission controllers — including science data and information about the health of the probe and its various systems — was garbled and unreadable.That kicked off a monthslong push to identify what had gone wrong and try to save the Voyager 1 mission.Spilker said she and her colleagues stayed hopeful and optimistic, but the team faced enormous chall …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnAfter working for five months to re-establish communication with the farthest-flung human-made object in existence, NASA announced this week that the Voyager 1 probe had finally phoned home.For the engineers and scientists who work on NASA’s longest-operating mission in space, it was a moment of joy and intense relief.“That Saturday morning, we all came in, we’re sitting around boxes of doughnuts and waiting for the data to come back from Voyager,” said Linda Spilker, the project scientist for the Voyager 1 mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We knew exactly what time it was going to happen, and it got really quiet and everybody just sat there and they’re looking at the screen.”When at long last the spacecraft returned the agency’s call, Spilker said the room erupted in celebration.“There were cheers, people raising their hands,” she said. “And a sense of relief, too — that OK, after all this hard work and going from barely being able to have a signal coming from Voyager to being in communication again, that was a tremendous relief and a great feeling.” Members of the Voyager flight team celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20. (NASA)The problem with Voyager 1 was first detected in November. At the time, NASA said it was still in contact with the spacecraft and could see that it was receiving signals from Earth. But what was being relayed back to mission controllers — including science data and information about the health of the probe and its various systems — was garbled and unreadable.That kicked off a monthslong push to identify what had gone wrong and try to save the Voyager 1 mission.Spilker said she and her colleagues stayed hopeful and optimistic, but the team faced enormous chall …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
