Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.The 47-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft is back in touch with NASA — but not out of the woods — after a technical issue caused a days-long communications blackout with the historic mission, which is billions of miles away in interstellar space.Voyager 1 is now using a radio transmitter it hasn’t relied on since 1981 to stay in contact with its team on Earth while engineers work to understand what went wrong.As the spacecraft, launched in September 1977, ages, the team has slowly turned off components to conserve power, allowing Voyager 1 to send back unique science data from 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away.The probe is the farthest spacecraft from Earth, operating beyond the heliosphere — the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond Pluto’s orbit — where its instruments directly sample interstellar space.The new issue is one of several the aging vehicle has faced in recent months, but Voyager’s team keeps finding creative solutions so the storied explorer can zoom along on its cosmic journey through uncharted territory.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-CaltechA radio glitch billions of miles awayOccasionally, engineers send commands to Voyager 1 to turn on some of its heaters and warm components that have sustained radiation damage over the decades, said Bruce Waggoner, the Voyager mission assurance manager. The heat can help reverse the radiation damage, which degrades the performance of the spacecraft’s components, he said.Messages are relayed to Voyager fro …
