Amateur astronomers pinpoint Voyager 1 using vintage 1950s telescope after malfunction

Voyager 1 is currently exploring interstellar space at a distance of 15.5 billion miles (24.9 billion kilometers) from Earth. Communicating with the most distant man-made object may be difficult, but not for a telescope designed to listen to the low frequencies emanating from the cosmos.

A team of amateur astronomers used the Dwingeloo radio telescope in the Netherlands to receive signals from Voyager 1 after a communication glitch forced the spacecraft to rely on a backup transmitter. Built in the 1950s, Dwingeloo joins an elite group of telescopes capable of detecting Voyager’s faint radio signals from deep space, a critical capability when NASA’s antennas are no longer able to communicate with the spacecraft.

In late October, Voyager 1 suddenly… She turned off one of her radio transmittersThis forced the mission team to rely on a backup unit, a weaker transmitter that was not used Since 1981. Voyager’s second radio transmitter, called the S-band, sends out a fainter signal than the NASA uses the Deep Space Network to communicate with its spacecraft, but the global array of giant radio antennas is optimized for higher frequency signals.

The Dwingelo telescope, on the other hand, is designed to observe at frequencies lower than the 8.4 GHz telemetry frequencies transmitted by Voyager 1, according to Radio astronomy station CA Mueller. Dwingeloo typically would not be able to detect signals transmitted by Voyager 1, since the dish network is less reflective at higher frequencies. However, when Voyager 1 shifted to a lower frequency, its messages fell within Dwingelo’s frequency range. Thus, astronomers exploited the spacecraft’s communication glitches to listen to its faint signals to NASA.

Astronomers used orbital predictions of Voyager 1’s position in space to correct for the Doppler shift in frequency caused by Earth’s motion, as well as the spacecraft’s motion through space. The weak signal was found directly, and additional analysis later confirmed that it corresponded to the location of Voyager 1.

Fortunately, the mission team at NASA He turned Voyager 1’s X-band transmitter back on in November, and is currently carrying out some remaining missions to return the spacecraft to its normal state. Fortunately, radio telescopes like Dwingeloo can help fill in the gaps while NASA’s communications suite struggles to reach its spacecraft.

The famous Voyager 1 spacecraft has provided scientists with precious data about the solar system and beyond For decades. On its way to interstellar space, the probe had close encounters with Jupiter and Saturn and discovered two Jovian moons, Thebe and Mets, as well as five new moons and a new ring called the G ring around Saturn.