NASA has reestablished communication with Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from Earth, after over five months of silence.

Despite still receiving commands from mission controllers, Voyager 1 stopped sending readable data back to Earth since November 14, 2023.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) identified a problem with the spacecraft’s onboard computer, specifically a corrupted chip responsible for storing part of its memory.

Unable to repair the chip, engineers devised a plan to relocate and adjust the affected code within the flight data subsystem (FDS) memory, ABC News reported.

The first portion of the fixed code was successfully transmitted on April 18, confirming the success of the solution when Voyager 1 responded on April 20.

Moving forward, the team will continue relocating portions of the FDS software to enable the spacecraft to resume returning science data.

Launched in September 1977, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, marking a historic milestone in space exploration.

Written by B.C. Begley