Two months after NASA crews reestablished diagnostic communications with Voyager 1, they recently received scientific observational data as well. This data, transmitted via the last remaining operational instruments aboard the furthest man-made object from Earth, offers critical observations on plasma and magnetism in interstellar space.

Voyager 1 has been journeying through space for 46 years and 7 months since its launch from Earth, and it has been 11 years and 8 months since it bid farewell to Pluto and exited our solar system. Currently, the probe is an astonishing 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth.

In March 2024, mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology managed to identify and address the issue that was preventing two-way communication with Voyager 1. The team diagnosed and fixed the problem by segmenting corrupted computer code into smaller sections and storing them in various locations on the probe's flight data subsystem. They then ensured that the onboard computer could access and reassemble these sections correctly. Following these meticulous efforts, JPL issued commands on May 19th to restart the transmission of scientific data.