Overview
- In September the Voyager team completed a coordinated power-saving heater swap dubbed the “Big Bang,” which replaced three higher‑power heaters with lower‑power units to delay another instrument shutdown that might have been required in 2027.
- Deep Space Network antennas failed to detect Voyager 1 during two scheduled contacts on October 18 and 19 and the probe’s signal automatically returned on October 20, after 48 hours of silence.
- Early engineering analysis at JPL indicates one primary thruster group stopped working and Voyager 1’s onboard fault‑protection automatically switched to backup thrusters, a response that put normal operations on hold while controllers assessed the spacecraft.
- Voyager 1 is expected to reach one light‑day from Earth on November 18, 2026, which will make one‑way radio commands take about 24 hours and create roughly a 48‑hour round‑trip for every instruction and reply.
- Despite power limits and aging hardware the spacecraft continues to send scientific data and still carries the Golden Record, but teams must adopt new operating routines and rely on built‑in fault protection as mission control adapts to long delays and tighter power margins.