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Voyagers: Project Alpha (Book 1) Kindle Edition

• Book 1 of 6 Voyager
• Print length 236 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 3 - 7
• Lexile measure 640L
• Publisher Random House Books for Young Readers
• Publication date September 1, 2015
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• ISBN-10 9780385386593
• ISBN-13 978-0385386586
• See all details
• Next 3 for you in this series $23.97
• Next 5 for you in this series $40.75
• All 6 for you in this series $49.14

• Customers Also Enjoyed
• In This Series
• By D. J. MacHale

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From school library journal, about the author, product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00OEXDM40
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Books for Young Readers (September 1, 2015)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 1, 2015
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 20708 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 236 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0385386605
• #547 in Children's Action & Adventure Sci-Fi Books
• #565 in Children's Survival Story eBooks
• #2,686 in Children's Fantasy & Magic Adventure

About the author

D. j. machale.

D.J. MacHale is the author of the bestselling book series Pendragon – Journal of an Adventure Through Time and Space; the spooky Morpheus Road trilogy; the sci-fi thriller trilogy The SYLO Chronicles; the spooky anthology The Library; the Audible Original fantasy The Equinox Curiosity Shop and the whimsical picture book The Monster Princess. In addition to his published works, he has written, directed and produced numerous award-winning television series and movies for young people including Are You Afraid of the Dark?; Flight 29 Down and Tower of Terror. D.J. lives with his family in Southern California.

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Voyagers: Project Alpha (Book 1‪)‬

• 4.2 • 13 Ratings

Publisher Description

#1 New York Times bestseller D. J. MacHale launches this part sci-fi, all action adventure, multiplatform series.  Earth is about to go dark. Without a new power source, life as we know it will be toast. A global competition is under way to determine which four kids will join the secret mission that might just save us all. Project Alpha is a contest of physical challenges, mental puzzles, and strategic alliances. The battle is fierce. Who will lead the team? Who will pilot the most complicated space ship ever built? Who will be a friend? An enemy? And how will they survive over a year stuck on a space ship together?  Once chosen, the Voyagers will journey to the far reaches of space, collecting unique elements and facing unbelievable dangers. The future of our planet is in their hands. Sure, they’ll be the best in the world . . . but can they save the world?  The action is on the page, on your device, and out of this world! And you don't have long to wait, 6 books are coming all in one year!  Do you have what it takes to be a Voyager? Find out at VoyagersHQ.com.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUN 8, 2015

With this fast-paced first installment of the Voyagers series, MacHale helps kick off a multiplatform, multi-author project la the 39 Clues; five subsequent books from Robin Wasserman, Patrick Carman, Kekla Magoon, Jeanne DuPrau, and Wendy Mass will follow, published two months apart. Eight 12-year-olds from around the world have been chosen to compete for four spots in Project Alpha, a deep-space mission to secure a new power source for Earth. (Due to the physical stresses of the trip, no one older than 12 can safely make the journey.) As the competitors face off against (holographic) dinosaurs and try their hands at video-game-like flight simulators, their true natures slowly surface. Once the four winners are chosen, the story skips over the subsequent months of training to the team's first mission, giving readers a taste of the challenges they will face. While the characters don't get much fleshing out in this first installment, their relationships, both competitive and connective, provide entertaining banter and conflicts. A slew of twists should keep readers looking forward to volume two. Ages 8 12.

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Project Alpha

• Digital Quiz

SIX BOOKS. SIX BLOCKBUSTER AUTHORS. ONE CHANCE TO SAVE EARTH.

Each book contains nonstop adventure, mysterious coded symbols and top secret files! Check out Voyagers HQ for a new planet report and an interactive game with each release.

I have approximately 2,348,962 novels stored in my memory banks, but my favorite six are The Voyagers saga! It's the story of my awesome friends who travel from galaxy to galaxy tracking down the solution to Earth's energy crisis.

Before the world goes dark, CLICK ON THE TABS BELOW to find out more about each book, and then start your literary adventure.

The entire future of our planet will soon be in the hands of four kids. Sure, they’ll be the best in the world . . . but can they save the world?

Earth is about to go dark. Without a new power source, life as we know it will be toast. A global competition is under way to determine who will join the secret mission that might just save us all. The Voyagers will venture to the far reaches of space, farther than anyone’s ever gone before, and they must be prepared to face anything.

But first the Voyagers team needs to be chosen. Project Alpha is a competition of physical challenges, mental puzzles, and political alliances. The battle is fierce, and only four will make the cut...

Discover the prehistoric jungles of

Planet j-16.

ZRK COMMANDER CUSTOMIZER

Customize your own robot officer.

Game of Flames

Earth is in danger. The world is about to go dark... unless four amazing kids can venture into outer space and bring back the solution.

Six elements, each on a different planet, fuse together to form an unlimited energy called the Source. When Team Alpha arrives at their second destination, Meta Prime, they begin to search the metal planet for the molten lava they need. It should be easy. This planet is quiet. Even the native robots are frozen in time.

But someone—or something—turns Meta Prime back on. Suddenly the Voyagers are stuck in a complex game between two alien lords. Is the one helping Team Alpha really on their side? Or are they about to change their name to Team Annihilated?

Travel to the robotic, war-torn world of Meta Prime.

Planet meta prime.

Get excited it's time for a

Zrk roundup.

Help STEAM organize ZRKs of the same type before they escape through the airlock.

Omega Rising

It’s a race against time as the Alpha and Omega teams battle to be the one to retrieve the next element needed to save Earth!

When Team Alpha arrives at their third planet, Aqua Gen, they must literally dive into treacherous waters. Dangerous sea creatures, bloodthirsty pirates, plus the competitive Omega Team suggest this won’t be an easy mission. But the Voyagers are prepared for anything!

Or so they think. It’s bad enough that they’ve run into a predator in their first minute on Aqua Gen, but when a member of the crew goes missing, they face a crisis. What is more important, saving a friend... or saving the world?

Set course for the ocean planet of Aqua Gen.

Planet aqua gen.

Prove your mad matching skills with

Play the traditional Aqua Genese tile-matching game: Glacier

INFINITY RIDERS

Hidden somewhere in the maze of tunnels beneath Planet Infinity’s surface is the element Team Alpha needs. But in a labyrinth this vast, how will they ever find it? Lucky for them, an alien race known as the Jackals have abandoned the planet, leaving behind their supplies, including... flying horses? Well, this just got awesome!

Too bad getting lost underground, dodging massive creatures called Saws, and trailing the reckless Omega team is so not awesome. Plus, once they get the element, it can kill them in an instant if they’re not careful. On a planet this deadly, one mistake could be the Voyagers last...

Get a primer on the ever-changing tunnels of Infinity.

Planet infinity.

Get your slice on with the

Spore slicer.

Break up the venemous spores to develop a cure for the Stinger toxin.

ESCAPE THE VORTEX

Planet Tundra may look like a giant marshmallow, but this is no winter wonderland—it’s a winter nightmare! Ravaged by windstorms and an unstable ground that will swallow you whole, this frozen landscape is the deadliest the Voyagers have encountered yet. Add in monstrous creatures called Ice Crawlers that hold the fifth element, and, well, this mission couldn’t get more chilling.

Or could it?

When the Omega team finds themselves in trouble, only Team Alpha can save them. But if the tables were turned, would the Omegas do the same?

Get the download on Tundra’s icy plains.

Planet tundra.

Help STEAM repair the Cloud Leopard in

Circuit solver.

Connect the nodes to keep keep the ship flying high!

THE SEVENTH ELEMENT

It’s been 13 months, 1 day, and 10 hours. . . .

The Voyagers have made it to the last planet. If they complete this mission, they can finally go home. But they’ve been in space a long time, and it’s starting to take its toll. When one of the crew falls deathly ill, the race to return to Earth becomes even more urgent. They just have to combat fire-breathing dragons and an evil alien clone out to sabotage their every move. No big deal.

At least the Voyagers have almost every element they need. Only one more to go—six elements to make the Source and save the world. So why is there a space in the Element Fuser for a seventh?

Learn the legends of the the dragon-infested

Planet dargon.

Mix elements to create the the Source and save the day!

Element fuser.

The Voyagers collected them, you combine them!

April 22, 2024

After Months of Gibberish, Voyager 1 Is Communicating Well Again

NASA scientists spent months coaxing the 46-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft back into healthy communication

By Meghan Bartels

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.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

After months of nonsensical transmissions from humanity’s most distant emissary, NASA’s iconic Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally communicating intelligibly with Earth again.

Voyager 1 launched in 1977 , zipped past Jupiter and Saturn within just a few years and has been trekking farther from our sun ever since; the craft crossed into interstellar space in 2012. But in mid-November 2023 Voyager 1’s data transmissions became garbled , sending NASA engineers on a slow quest to troubleshoot the distant spacecraft. Finally, that work has paid off, and NASA has clear information on the probe’s health and status, the agency announced on April 22.

“It’s the most serious issue we’ve had since I’ve been the project manager, and it’s scary because you lose communication with the spacecraft,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an interview with Scientific American when the team was still tracking down the issue.

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The Voyager 1 spacecraft is a scientific legend : It discovered that Jupiter’s moon Io, far from being a dead world like our own companion, is instead a supervolcanic world . The craft’s data suggested that Saturn’s moon Titan might have liquid on its surface. And for more than a decade, Voyager 1 has given scientists a glimpse at what space looks like beyond the influence of our sun.

Yet its long years in the harsh environment of space have done a number on the probe, which was designed to last just four years. In particular, degraded performance and low power supplies have forced NASA to turn off six of its 10 instruments, and its communication has gotten even spottier than can be explained by the fact that cosmic mechanics mean a signal takes nearly one Earth day to travel between humans and the probe.

When the latest communications glitch occurred last fall, scientists could still send signals to the distant probe, and they could tell that the spacecraft was operating. But all they got from Voyager 1 was gibberish—what NASA described in December 2023 as “a repeating pattern of ones and zeros.” The team was able to trace the issue back to a part of the spacecraft’s computer system called the flight data subsystem, or FDS, and identified that a particular chip within that system had failed.

Mission personnel couldn’t repair the chip. They were, however, able to break the code held on the failed chip into pieces they could tuck into spare corners of the FDS’s memory, according to NASA. The first such fix was transmitted to Voyager 1 on April 18. With a total distance of 30 billion miles to cross from Earth to the spacecraft and back, the team had to wait nearly two full days for a response from the probe. But on April 20 NASA got confirmation that the initial fix worked. Additional commands to rewrite the rest of the FDS system’s lost code are scheduled for the coming weeks, according to the space agency, including commands that will restore the spacecraft’s ability to send home science data.

Although, for now, Voyager 1 appears to be on the mend, NASA scientists know it won’t last forever. Sooner or later, a glitch they can’t fix will occur, or the spacecraft’s ever dwindling fuel supply will run out for good. Until then NASA is determined to get as much data as possible out of the venerable spacecraft—and its twin, Voyager 2, which experienced its own communications glitch earlier in 2023 .

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Well, hello, Voyager 1! The venerable spacecraft is once again making sense

Nell Greenfieldboyce

Members of the Voyager team celebrate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1 for the first time in months. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

Members of the Voyager team celebrate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1 for the first time in months.

NASA says it is once again able to get meaningful information back from the Voyager 1 probe, after months of troubleshooting a glitch that had this venerable spacecraft sending home messages that made no sense.

The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes launched in 1977 on a mission to study Jupiter and Saturn but continued onward through the outer reaches of the solar system. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space, the previously unexplored region between the stars. (Its twin, traveling in a different direction, followed suit six years later.)

Voyager 1 had been faithfully sending back readings about this mysterious new environment for years — until November, when its messages suddenly became incoherent .

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is talking nonsense. Its friends on Earth are worried

It was a serious problem that had longtime Voyager scientists worried that this historic space mission wouldn't be able to recover. They'd hoped to be able to get precious readings from the spacecraft for at least a few more years, until its power ran out and its very last science instrument quit working.

For the last five months, a small team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California has been working to fix it. The team finally pinpointed the problem to a memory chip and figured out how to restore some essential software code.

"When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft," NASA stated in an update.

The usable data being returned so far concerns the workings of the spacecraft's engineering systems. In the coming weeks, the team will do more of this software repair work so that Voyager 1 will also be able to send science data, letting researchers once again see what the probe encounters as it journeys through interstellar space.

After a 12.3 billion-mile 'shout,' NASA regains full contact with Voyager 2

• interstellar mission

NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

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.

After some inventive sleuthing, the mission team can — for the first time in five months — check the health and status of the most distant human-made object in existence.

For the first time since November , NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth.

After receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1 for the first time in five months, members of the Voyager flight team celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

Get the Latest News from the Final Frontier

During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. Launched over 46 years ago , the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

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Calla Cofield

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

626-808-2469

[email protected]

Voyager 1 is sending data back to Earth for the first time in 5 months

For the first time in five months, NASA engineers have received decipherable data from Voyager 1 after crafting a creative solution to fix a communication problem aboard humanity's most distant spacecraft in the cosmos.

Voyager 1 is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, and at 46 years old, the probe has shown multiple quirks and signs of aging in recent years.

The latest issue experienced by Voyager 1 first cropped up in November 2023, when the flight data system's telemetry modulation unit began sending an indecipherable repeating pattern of code.

Voyager 1's flight data system collects information from the spacecraft's science instruments and bundles it with engineering data that reflects its current health status. Mission control on Earth receives that data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeroes.

But since November, Voyager 1's flight data system had been stuck in a loop. While the probe has continued to relay a steady radio signal to its mission control team on Earth over the past few months, the signal did not carry any usable data.

The mission team received the first coherent data about the health and status of Voyager 1's engineering systems on April 20. While the team is still reviewing the information, everything they've seen so far suggests Voyager 1 is healthy and operating properly.

"Today was a great day for Voyager 1," said Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL, in a statement Saturday. "We're back in communication with the spacecraft. And we look forward to getting science data back."

The breakthrough came as the result of a clever bit of trial and error and the unraveling of a mystery that led the team to a single chip.

Troubleshooting from billions of miles away

After discovering the issue, the mission team attempted sending commands to restart the spacecraft's computer system and learn more about the underlying cause of the problem.

The team sent a command called a "poke" to Voyager 1 on March 1 to get the flight data system to run different software sequences in the hopes of finding out what was causing the glitch.

On March 3, the team noticed that activity from one part of the flight data system stood out from the rest of the garbled data. While the signal wasn't in the format the Voyager team is used to seeing when the flight data system is functioning as expected, an engineer with NASA's Deep Space Network was able to decode it.

The Deep Space Network is a system of radio antennae on Earth that help the agency communicate with the Voyager probes and other spacecraft exploring our solar system.

The decoded signal included a readout of the entire flight data system's memory.

By investigating the readout, the team determined the cause of the issue: 3% of the flight data system's memory is corrupted. A single chip responsible for storing part of the system's memory, including some of the computer's software code, isn't working properly. While the cause of the chip's failure is unknown, it could be worn out or may have been hit by an energetic particle from space, the team said.

The loss of the code on the chip caused Voyager 1's science and engineering data to be unusable.

Since there was no way to repair the chip, the team opted to store the affected code from the chip elsewhere in the system's memory. While they couldn't pinpoint a location large enough to hold all of the code, they were able to divide the code into sections and store it in different spots within the flight data system.

"To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole," according to an update from NASA. "Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the (flight data system) memory needed to be updated as well."

After determining the code necessary for packaging Voyager 1's engineering data, engineers sent a radio signal to the probe commanding the code to a new location in the system's memory on April 18.

Given Voyager 1's immense distance from Earth, it takes a radio signal about 22.5 hours to reach the probe, and another 22.5 hours for a response signal from the spacecraft to reach Earth.

On April 20, the team received Voyager 1's response indicating that the clever code modification had worked, and they could finally receive readable engineering data from the probe once more.

Exploring interstellar space

Within the coming weeks, the team will continue to relocate other affected parts of the system's software, including those responsible for returning the valuable science data Voyager 1 is collecting.

Initially designed to last five years, the Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, launched in 1977 and are the longest-operating spacecraft in history. Their exceptionally long life spans mean that both spacecraft have provided additional insights about our solar system and beyond after achieving their preliminary goals of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune decades ago.

The probes are currently venturing through uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun's bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Voyager 2, which is operating normally, has traveled more than 12.6 billion miles (20.3 billion kilometers) from our planet.

Over time, both spacecraft have encountered unexpected issues and dropouts, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn't communicate with Earth. In August 2023, the mission team used a long-shot "shout" technique to restore communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft's antenna in the wrong direction.

The team estimates it's a few weeks away from receiving science data from Voyager 1 and looks forward to seeing what that data contains.

"We never know for sure what's going to happen with the Voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going," said Voyager Project Manager Suzanne Dodd, in a statement. "We've had many anomalies, and they are getting harder. But we've been fortunate so far to recover from them. And the mission keeps going. And younger engineers are coming onto the Voyager team and contributing their knowledge to keep the mission going."

(The-CNN-Wire & 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.)

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NASA's Voyager 1 resumes sending engineering updates to Earth

For the first time since November, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft's three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it's sent to Earth.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory—including some of the FDS computer's software code—isn't working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft's engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22.5 hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22.5 hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification had worked: For the first time in five months, they were able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. Launched over 46 years ago, the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

Provided by NASA

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After months of silence, Voyager 1 has returned NASA’s calls

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For the last five months, it seemed very possible that a 46-year-old conversation had finally reached its end.

Since its launch from Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 5, 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has diligently sent regular updates to Earth on the health of its systems and data collected from its onboard instruments.

But in November, the craft went quiet.

Voyager 1 is now some 15 billion miles away from Earth. Somewhere in the cold interstellar space between our sun and the closest stars, its flight data system stopped communicating with the part of the probe that allows it to send signals back to Earth. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge could tell that Voyager 1 was getting its messages, but nothing was coming back.

“We’re to the point where the hardware is starting to age,” said Linda Spilker, the project scientist for the Voyager mission. “It’s like working on an antique car, from 15 billion miles away.”

Week after week, engineers sent troubleshooting commands to the spacecraft, each time patiently waiting the 45 hours it takes to get a response here on Earth — 22.5 hours traveling at the speed of light to reach the probe, and 22.5 hours back.

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By March, the team had figured out that a memory chip that stored some of the flight data system’s software code had failed, turning the craft’s outgoing communications into gibberish.

A long-distance repair wasn’t possible. There wasn’t enough space anywhere in the system to shift the code in its entirety. So after manually reviewing the code line by line, engineers broke it up and tucked the pieces into the available slots of memory.

They sent a command to Voyager on Thursday. In the early morning hours Saturday, the team gathered around a conference table at JPL: laptops open, coffee and boxes of doughnuts in reach.

At 6:41 a.m., data from the craft showed up on their screens. The fix had worked .

“We went from very quiet and just waiting patiently to cheers and high-fives and big smiles and sighs of relief,” Spilker said. “I’m very happy to once again have a meaningful conversation with Voyager 1.”

Voyager 1 is one of two identical space probes. Voyager 2, launched two weeks before Voyager 1, is now about 13 billion miles from Earth, the two crafts’ trajectories having diverged somewhere around Saturn. (Voyager 2 continued its weekly communications uninterrupted during Voyager 1’s outage.)

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They are the farthest-flung human-made objects in the universe, having traveled farther from their home planet than anything else this species has built. The task of keeping communications going grows harder with each passing day. Every 24 hours, Voyager 1 travels 912,000 miles farther away from us. As that distance grows, the signal becomes slower and weaker.

When the probe visited Jupiter in 1979, it was sending back data at a rate of 115.2 kilobits per second, Spilker said. Today, 45 years and more than 14 billion miles later, data come back at a rate of 40 bits per second.

The team is cautiously optimistic that the probes will stay in contact for three more years, long enough to celebrate the mission’s 50th anniversary in 2027, Spilker said. They could conceivably last until the 2030s.

The conversation can’t last forever. Microscopic bits of silica keep clogging up the thrusters that keep the probes’ antennas pointed toward Earth, which could end communications. The power is running low. Eventually, the day will come when both Voyagers stop transmitting data to Earth, and the first part of their mission ends.

But on the day each craft goes quiet, they begin a new era, one that could potentially last far longer. Each probe is equipped with a metallic album cover containing a Golden Record , a gold-plated copper disk inscribed with sounds and images meant to describe the species that built the Voyagers and the planet they came from.

Erosion in space is negligible; the images could be readable for another billion years or more. Should any other intelligent life form encounter one of the Voyager probes and have a means of retrieving the data from the record, they will at the very least have a chance to figure out who sent them — even if our species is by that time long gone.

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Corinne Purtill is a science and medicine reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her writing on science and human behavior has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Time Magazine, the BBC, Quartz and elsewhere. Before joining The Times, she worked as the senior London correspondent for GlobalPost (now PRI) and as a reporter and assignment editor at the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. She is a native of Southern California and a graduate of Stanford University.

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NASA hears from Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, after months of quiet

NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 in a way that makes sense

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 again in a way that makes sense.

The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the trouble.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data.

It takes 22 1/2 hours to send a signal to Voyager 1, more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space. The signal travel time is double that for a round trip.

Contact was never lost, rather it was like making a phone call where you can’t hear the person on the other end, a JPL spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 has been exploring interstellar space — the space between star systems — since 2012. Its twin, Voyager 2, is 12.6 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) away and still working fine.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Comparative investigations of aftersintering of UO 2 fuel pellets

• Theory and Processes of Formation and Sintering of Powdered Materials
• Published: 06 May 2010
• Volume 51 , pages 173–176, ( 2010 )

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• V. V. Basov 1  

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The basic parameters of comparative tests of UO 2 fuel pellets produced by the technology of powder metallurgy for aftersinterability using their repeated thermal treatment (aftersintering) in different gas media, namely, with and without humidification, are presented. The results of an evaluation of the level of aftersinterability of these pellets by different procedures is presented, they are analyzed, and a substantiation of the expediency of using this operation manual for evaluating afersintering without the humidification of the gas medium developed at the OAO Machine Building Works (MSZ), Elektrostal’, Moscow oblast, is presented.

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Investigation of (U, Th)O2 Fuel

Preparation of powdered uranium oxides by microwave heating of substandard ceramic pellets of oxide nuclear fuel, fuel pellets based on uranium dioxide and alloyed with nanodispersed additives of al(oh)3 and tio2.

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Basov, V.V., Metodika provedeniya ispytanii tabletok is dioksida urana na “dospekaemost’ “ (Procedure for Performance of the Tests of the Pellets made of Uranium Dioxide for Aftersinterability), Electrostal’: PO MSZ, 1994.

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Bakhteev, A.N., Opredelenie termicheskoi stabil’nosti geometricheskikh razmerov toplivnykh tabletok tipa “V” i “R”: Metodika vypolneniya izmerenii (Determination of Thermal Stability of Geometric Sizes for Fuel Pellets of Types “V” and “R”: Procedure of Carrying out the Measurements), Moscow: VNIINM, 1992.

Basov, V.V., Opredelenie kharacteristik termicheskoi stabil’nosti toplivnykh tabletok tipov “R”, “R-E”, “V”: Metodika (tekhnologicheskaya instruktsiya) (Determination of Characteristics of Thermal Stability of Fuel Pellets of Types “R”, “R-E”, and “V”: Procedure (Technological Instruction), Electrostal’: OAO MSZ, 1999.

Kotel’nikov, R.B., Bashlykov, S.N., Kashtanov, A.I., et al., Vysokotemperaturnoe yadernoe toplivo (HighTemperature Nuclear Fuel), Moscow: Metallurgiya, 1978.

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OAO Machine Building Works, ul. K. Marksa 12, Elektrostal’, Moscow oblast, 144001, Russia

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Original Russian Text © V.V. Basov, 2009, published in Izvestiya VUZ. Poroshkovaya Metallurgiya i Funktsional’nye Pokrytiya, 2009, No. 3, pp. 27–30.

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Basov, V.V. Comparative investigations of aftersintering of UO 2 fuel pellets. Russ. J. Non-ferrous Metals 51 , 173–176 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3103/S1067821210020185

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Published : 06 May 2010

Issue Date : April 2010

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3103/S1067821210020185

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• fuel pellets
• model of fuel compaction
• repeated thermal treatment
• aftersintering
• aftersinterability
• procedure of carrying out aftersintering
• aftersintering installation
• stoichiometric composition
• isothermal sintering
• thermal shrinkage
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