Voyager 1’s signal returned on 20 October after missed contacts

Voyager 1’s signal returned on 20 October 2026, before engineers sent commands to troubleshoot its unexpected silence, NASA said in its October 29 update. The team had maintained contact since the recovery.

NASA launched Voyager 1 on 5 September 1977 to study the outer Solar System and interstellar space. Both Voyager probes now travel outside the heliosphere—the Sun’s bubble of particles and magnetic fields—and are the only spacecraft to study that region directly.

A thruster switch, but no diagnosis

NASA’s Deep Space Network, the antenna network used to communicate with distant spacecraft, detected no signal during scheduled contacts on 18 October and 19. Those attempts were 24 hours apart.

Engineers have determined that a group of thrusters went offline and its backups turned on, NASA said. The switch could indicate that onboard computers detected a problem and put the spacecraft into safe mode, The Register said in its account citing Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). NASA says engineers are still investigating the cause of the communications loss.

Voyager 1’s thrusters help keep its radio antenna pointed toward Earth. NASA says the computers automatically switch to backup thrusters if they detect something wrong with the active ones. This response, called fault protection, puts the spacecraft into a stable configuration and pauses normal operations so engineers can diagnose the problem and act.

Badaruddin said this was the first time the team had seen the spacecraft behave this way, though the team must expect surprises at this stage of the mission.

We’re relieved to be back in contact with Voyager 1 and are eager to understand what happened.

Saving power for science

The probes have faced earlier communications problems. The Register recalled Voyager 2’s antenna-pointing problem in 2023 and a previous low-power condition that unexpectedly shut off a Voyager 1 radio transmitter.

Their power supplies are shrinking. The generators convert heat from decaying plutonium into electricity, and NASA says each probe loses about 4 watts of available power annually.

In early September 2026, engineers completed Voyager 1’s “Big Bang” power-saving procedure, replacing 3 devices with lower-power alternatives about 6 weeks after the same swap on Voyager 2. The replacements had to happen simultaneously to reduce electricity use while keeping heat properly distributed across the spacecraft.

NASA says the change will let Voyager 1’s remaining science instruments operate longer than previously anticipated. Without it, another instrument would have needed to be shut off as early as summer 2027.

A longer wait for replies

If a future loss of signal persisted, Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd told The Register the team would first check for a problem on the ground. Months of listening would follow before engineers declared the mission over.

As the investigation continues, NASA expects Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object, to reach one light-day from Earth on 18 November 2026. At that distance, radio signals carrying a command and its reply will take 24 hours each way, extending the wait between sending instructions and receiving a response.