Voyager 1 has been repaired, sort of

For the first time in months, NASA is receiving readable data from Voyager 1. The spacecraft that explores interstellar space from a distance of 15 billion miles sends back scientific and engineering data in binary code, but that code suddenly became unreadable in November. NASA scientists have reportedly found a fault in a single memory chip in the flight data subsystem (FDS), one of three onboard computers, which packages the data into code. It’s unclear why the chip failed, but according to CNN, it means that 3% of the FDS’s memory is damaged. Scientists were able to work around the problem by transferring code in the chip to three other locations within the FDS, as no single location is large enough to hold all the data.

This required “a complicated maneuver, with a sophisticated series of changes needed to ensure that the various components could still function together,” UPI reports. NASA confirmed Monday that the fix worked and that scientists had once again received readable technical data, allowing them to monitor Voyager 1’s health and status. However, the scientific part of the data remains unreadable. “Over the coming weeks, the team will move and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software, including those that will return scientific data,” NASA said. (More Voyager 1 stories.)