In a plot twist befitting a melancholy science fiction novel, NASA has announced that it has lost regular communication with Voyager 1, the plucky space probe that has spent the past 46 years writing humanity’s longest and loneliest travel blog from the fringes of interstellar space.
Voyager 1, which launched in 1977 during an era when disco still ruled and space exploration felt like destiny rather than budget committee fodder, has been boldly going where no human-made object has gone before. As of late 2023, it is currently more than 15 billion miles from Earth, making it the most distant of Earth’s emissaries and, incidentally, also the one most likely to experience a technical issue that can only be solved by divine intervention or an extremely long extension cord.
The problem first surfaced in November when data being transmitted back to Earth suddenly turned into what scientists diplomatically described as gibberish. The spacecraft’s flight data system, which normally provides engineers with vital life updates such as temperatures, voltages and whether Voyager is still in the mood to talk to anyone, began spewing out what one imagines could pass for intergalactic jazz.
NASA suspects the fault lies in one of the three onboard computers, a relic so ancient by today’s standards that it could probably run Minesweeper but only if you skipped the graphics. Known as the flight data subsystem or FDS for those who enjoy acronyms, the system is believed to have suffered a corruption in its memory, like a celestial bout of forgetfulness.
Fixing a 1970s spacecraft located 15 billion miles away is, unsurprisingly, something of a challenge. NASA engineers, no strangers to turning cosmic lemons into scientific lemonade, are now considering new commands they could beam to Voyager to bypass the corrupted portion of memory. Of course, with a signal taking over 22 hours to travel one way, every troubleshooting step is essentially a cosmic seminar in patience and hopeful optimism.
Despite the radio silence, Voyager 1 remains powered and responsive to signals, though it is communicating something akin to unintelligible Morse code scribbled by someone who forgot what words were. Engineers retain the kind of cautious optimism that only rocket scientists with a 46-year track record of success can muster, and continue sending instructions in the cosmic hope that the old probe will remember how to conjugate basic telemetry sentences.
Until then, Voyager 1 continues sailing stoically through the galactic void, carrying a golden record of Earth’s sounds, music, and greetings in 55 languages, just in case someone or something eventually finds it and is in the mood for a mixtape from a small blue planet with communication issues.
Voyager may be ignoring our calls for now, but hey, we’ve all been there.