NASA receives message from interstellar spacecraft explorer 15 billion miles away

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NASA has confirmed it has received a message from an interstellar traveler that is more than 15 billion miles away from Earth, and the message was good news.

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That interstellar traveler is none other than NASA's Voyager 1, which used its backup radio transmitter, which hasn't been activated since 1981, to send a message back to Earth. The message came after Voyager 1 experienced an issue that temporarily paused communications, as the spacecraft put itself into a protective power state to preserve the health of its instruments and to converse power. The power state and the severing of communications were caused by instructions NASA sent via its Deep Space Network on October 16 that told Voyager 1 to turn off one of its heaters.

On October 18, NASA realized that one of the spacecraft's antennas, which was its primary X-band radio transmitter, was inactive. NASA believes the spacecraft's fault protection system triggered two more times, resulting in Voyager switching to its S-band radio transmitter, which hadn't been used since 1981. At this point NASA was metaphorically sweating as the S-band frequency is much harder to detect due to its fainter signal.

However, on October 22, NASA sent off a message on the S-band frequency, and two days later on October 24 NASA reconnected with Voyager. Notably, Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, and in 2012, it became the first human-made object to pass into interstellar space or outside of the Sun's magnetic field.

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