Hasta La Gadget!

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab announced that it is working on a data transmission problem with Voyager 2. JPL said that the issue appears to be related to the flight data system, which formats data before sending it back to Earth. Signals currently take about 13 hours to travel each way between the spacecraft and our planet.

“Voyager 2’s initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in a statement. “It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery.”

Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, about two weeks before its twin Voyager 1 spacecraft. The two craft are currently the most distant human-made objects, and are out at the edge of the solar system. Mission managers expect Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to exit our system and enter interstellar space in about five years.