Ageing space probe deploys radio transmitter it hasn’t used since 1981
By Ashley Strickland, CNN
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist's concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012.
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The 47-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft is back in touch with NASA - but not out of the woods - after a technical issue caused a days-long communications blackout with the historic mission, which is billions of miles away in interstellar space.
Voyager 1 is now using a radio transmitter it hasn't relied on since 1981 to stay in contact with its team on Earth while engineers work to understand what went wrong.
As the spacecraft, launched in September 1977, ages, the team has slowly turned off components to conserve power, allowing Voyager 1 to send back unique science data from 15 bil...










