The Voyager 1 probe 45 years ago sent back strange data, and NASA found out why.

CTOnews.com, August 31 (Xinhua) in May, the Voyager 1 probe launched by NASA 45 years ago began sending mission controllers information about its health and activities, but the information was strange and garbled, but the probe operated normally and continued to collect and return scientific data.

The information comes from the probe's attitude connection and Control system (AACS), the system that keeps Voyager 1's antenna pointing to Earth. Engineers have found the cause of the garbled information, which turned out to be a large number of errors caused by the telemetry data sent by the system through an airborne computer that was known to have stopped working several years ago.

Engineers don't know why AACS sent telemetry data to the wrong computer, but speculate that it may have received an error instruction from another airborne computer. Now that engineers have ordered AACS to send telemetry data to another normal airborne computer, Voyager 1 has once again sent back clear telemetry data about its state outside the solar system.

CTOnews.com learned that NASA launched Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 in 1977 on a mission to explore extrasolar planets. Voyager 1 flew over Jupiter and Saturn during its main mission and moved on, eventually entering interstellar space in 2012, while Voyager 2 entered interstellar space in 2018.

As of August 30, Voyager 1 is 23.5 billion kilometers from Earth, and Voyager 1's radio signals take nearly 22 hours to reach Earth.