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NASA's Voyager 1 mysteriously lost touch with Earth
Mashable • • general
Key Points:
- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft went silent for two days in October, missing scheduled check-ins, but communication was restored on October 20 without any further outages.
- Engineers discovered that one set of thrusters shut down and a backup set took over automatically to keep the spacecraft stable, though the cause of the shutdown remains unknown.
- Voyager 1 is experiencing power limitations as its plutonium power source depletes, forcing NASA to turn off instruments and implement power-saving measures to extend the mission.
- On November 18, Voyager 1 is expected to reach the milestone of being one "light-day" away from Earth, approximately 16.09 billion miles, meaning radio signals take 24 hours each way.
- Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is the farthest human-made object from Earth, traveling at 38,000 mph, and was the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space in 2012.
