According to media reports, the Voyager 1 probe, 24 billion kilometers away from Earth, suddenly returned a meaningless digital signal and cut off normal communication links. Although the probe is still capable of receiving instructions from Earth, it takes about 22.5 hours to send information to interstellar space. This means that it will take days before experts can confirm whether the nearly 50-year-old probe can be successfully repaired.
NASA found that the failure of Voyager 1 was caused by a communication disorder between the flight data system and the telemetry modulation unit in the probe. Scientific data related to interstellar space has not yet been uploaded to Earth, and engineering data describing the condition of the probe is messy. Although the engineer has tried to restart FDS several times, they have failed.
To solve the problem, NASA research teams are reviewing documents from probes and their computer operations from years ago, an archaic technology that has been largely forgotten. In comparison, modern smartphones can process more than 100 billion instructions per second, compared to the Voyager's computer of only about 8,000.
In 1977, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes were launched and were primarily designed to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Now that they are out of range, NASA acknowledges that even if Voyager 1 is repaired, its useful life will run out, and that both probes will run out of power as they cross the Kuiper Belt.