Voyager 1's Communications Blackout Mysteriously Fixed Itself
NASA just won't quit the Voyager probes, and it seems that the Voyager probes just won't quit themselves. New reports indicate that after an unexplained loss of communications in October, Voyager 1 came back online, even though NASA had no time to attempt a manual fix.
“This is the first time we’ve seen the spacecraft do something like this, but we are also at a point in the mission where we have to expect the unexpected,” says Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We’re relieved to be back in contact with Voyager 1 and are eager to understand what happened.”
So far, the team has only announced that a bank of thrusters automatically shut down, causing backup thrusters to start. This is supposed to happen in response to a detected problem with the main thrusters, though they don't currently know what that problem...
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