Back in February, I noted that after nearly 47 years, Voyager 1 may be dying. But Goonies NASA nerds never say die. After months of meticulous debugging work, we are once again receiving valid data from Voyager.

On April 18, 2024, the team began sending the code to its new location in the FDS memory. This was a painstaking process, as a radio signal takes 22.5 hours to traverse the distance between Earth and Voyager 1, and it then takes another 22.5 hours to get a signal back from the craft.

By Saturday (April 20), however, the team confirmed their modification had worked. For the first time in five months, the scientists were able to communicate with Voyager 1 and check its health.

A jubilant flight team, after receiving valid data from Voyager 1 for the first time in five months
[Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Patching code from 15 billion miles away to work around a corrupted 46-year-old memory chip is pretty damned amazing.