NASA hears from Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, after months of quiet

By MARCIA DUNN
AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 in a way that makes sense. The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers in California traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the problem. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore the science data. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles away in interstellar space. Its twin, Voyager 2, is more than 12 billion miles away and still working fine.