NASA fixed Voyager 1’s glitchy memory from 24 billion kilometers away

Voyager spacecraft defied expectations and only powered down after 47 years in space

Originally built for a four-year mission, Voyagers 1 and 2 used a rare planetary alignment and gravity assists to reach interstellar space. With limited power and aging systems, they will continue to send data until the mid-2030s. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Intended to last four years, the Voyager spacecraft have lasted nearly five decades

Launched in 1977, the Voyager probes still send data from billions of miles away, guided by engineers who’ve turned down promotions to stay with the mission. The team continues to support the probes as they move 37,000 mph through space.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Voyager science teams still collect valuable space data using four active tools

These instruments track magnetic fields, solar wind particles, radio emissions from the heliopause, and hydrogen levels in the outer heliosphere. Even though each Voyager sends data at just 160 bits per second, NASA receives 6–8 hours of tracking data daily.

Explore a NASA timeline of the entire Voyager mission

This infographic leads users through the entire Voyager mission timeline, starting at its conception and moving through launch, to each destination, and finally, the Voyagers' crossing into interstellar space.

Voyager mission's Golden Record captures Earth’s essence for alien discovery

Housed aboard Voyager 1 and 2, each record serves as a time capsule of human culture and a peaceful introduction to any intelligent life. Even if never played, the records can outlast humanity and travel through space for a billion years.

Voyager 1 captured Earth as a 'Pale Blue Dot' from 6 billion kilometers away

On Feb. 14, 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the farthest photo of Earth ever captured. Earth appears so small in the image that it takes up less than a single pixel out of 640,000 in the photo's frame.

Voyager Station, the world's first space hotel, is planned for 2027

The structure spans 488 meters in diameter and will rotate to simulate one-sixth of Earth's gravity while circumnavigating the planet every 90 minutes. The Voyager Station is designed to accommodate 450 guests and 150 crew members, providing amenities such as restaurants, a sports hall, and a movie theater.

View a media gallery from the assembly of Voyager 1 and 2

This archive includes the many steps it took to put together each Voyager probe. Photos focus on individual parts, like the 8-track tape deck, the large dish-shaped antenna, and its long arm magnetometer boom.

Congress settled for the Viking program after canceling the Voyager Mars program

NASA's proposed Voyager missions to Mars and Venus in the 1970s were canceled due to budget cuts and the Apollo 1 fire. The Viking program's smaller scope—focused on data collection—was the economically viable alternative to manned Mars mission proposals.

Hubble overcame early optical failure and became a critical scientific instrument

The flaw in Hubble's mirror was smaller than the width of a human hair, but fixing it required a space mission as complex as a Hollywood rescue story—with astronauts installing corrective optics like contact lenses for a giant eye in the sky.

The Year 2038 problem is the next potential computer time rollover bug

Many older systems store time as a signed 32-bit integer counting seconds since Jan. 1, 1970. That counter maxes out on Jan. 19, 2038—overflowing into negative time and sending clocks back to 1901, potentially crashing any older software that depends on accurate dates.

NASA designed the Golden Record using hydrogen to ensure it's universally readable

The Golden Record holds what is essentially a human "time capsule," featuring music, nature sounds, and greetings from around the world. NASA used the radiation period of hydrogen's simplest transition as a baseline to convey timing and structure. The first coded image is included on the cover as a test so aliens can check if they decoded it correctly.

The Deep Space Network keeps NASA linked to spacecraft billions of miles away

NASA's DSN is a global system of giant radio antennas that receive data from faraway spacecraft like Voyager 1 and the James Webb Space Telescope. It is sensitive enough to detect a signal as weak as a single light bulb from billions of miles away.

Atmospheric drag is causing the Hubble Space Telescope to drift toward Earth slowly

Without interventions to boost the observatory to a higher orbit, Hubble is expected to fall to Earth's surface in the mid-2030s. In the meantime, the telescope is expected to continue to be productive by shifting its mode of operation to rely on a single gyroscope, down from three.

A Y2K glitch billed one VHS renter $91,000 for a movie

At a video store in upstate New York, a date rollover error marked a customer’s 1999 rental as 100 years overdue, resulting in a $91,250 bill. The store quickly fixed the bug and gave him a free rental as consolation.

Mixed reality technology helped make repairs to a quantum physics facility in space

In 2021, astronaut Megan McArthur used a HoloLens to work alongside Earth-based engineers and make hardware replacements to the International Space Station's Cold Atom Lab, the first quantum science facility in Earth orbit. The facility cools atoms to near absolute zero to perform quantum chemistry experiments in a microgravity environment.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

The Chernobyl virus earned its name for activating on the meltdown's anniversary

Affecting Windows 95 and 98 computers, it filled gaps in the code of any program opened after infecting a computer, earning it the nickname "Spacefiller." On April 26, 1999, the virus overwrote part of the software responsible for booting up a computer, rendering it unusable.

Logic bomb viruses can awaken from a dormant phase without human input

Theoretically, computer viruses can remain idle indefinitely while awaiting specific user actions, as instructed by their code. However, logic bombs—embedded code that triggers when specific conditions are met—can automatically execute viruses, such as when a certain date or time is reached.

Some online users believe gravity will 'switch off' for 7 seconds in August 2026

Conspiracy theorists believe NASA is preparing for the gravity blackout under a classified operation called "Project Anchor." They speculate that the purpose of the secret project is to test whether Earth can survive such an event. NASA has rejected the claim. Considering the physics of a gravity blackout, the outcome would likely be chaotic but not total destruction.

Help scientists at LIGO train AI to resolve glitches in observational data

Volunteers are provided with visual representations of signal abnormalities at various frequencies and tasked with categorizing them based on reference examples. Progressing through the tool unlocks more difficult images and additional features. Categorized images will be used to train machine learning algorithms for automated future classification.

Think we decoded the genome in 2000? Nope. It was 2022.

Two decades after the draft sequence of the human genome was unveiled to great fanfare, a team of 99 scientists has finally deciphered the entire thing. They have filled in vast gaps and corrected a long list of errors in previous versions, giving us a new view of our DNA.

Infrared vision gives Webb telescope access to the oldest light in the universe

To peer into the universe’s earliest moments, the Webb had to solve several immense engineering challenges: deploying a massive sun shield, surviving extreme cold, and stabilizing ultra-sensitive instruments. The telescope’s mirrors can adjust themselves in steps 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.

View galleries of images taken by the Voyager spacecraft during planetary flybys

The images and videos include close-ups of Uranus, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, Saturn's ring system, and Neptune's Great Dark Spot. The Pale Blue Dot color image of Earth is included as part of the solar system's family portrait.

Explore a series of NASA visualizations tracking satellites and space debris

The series illustrates the population of objects orbiting Earth as of February 2024, using data from US Space Command. These include active satellites, defunct spacecraft, rocket bodies and debris fragments larger than roughly 10 centimeters in low Earth orbit.

Internet sleuths solve secret message on Perseverance rover’s Mars parachute

In 2020, the Perseverance Rover landed on Mars, sending a message for the folks back home on its parachute. It took fewer than six hours for the Internet's collective forces to decode the secret slogan hidden in the parachute's colors and patterns, as well as the geographic coordinates of the earth-bound place where rocketry was perfected.

Researchers use the brain's ability to edit memories to explore memory deletion

Scientists have successfully implanted false memories in mice after studying how the editing process works in the brain. Beyond potentially deleting memories in those with PTSD, upcoming research may allow clinicians to forecast the onset of neurodegenerative diseases.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

In 2018, SpaceX launched a Tesla Roadster into heliocentric orbit for publicity

As of February 2023, the vehicle and its mannequin driver—dubbed "Starman"—have completed three and a quarter revolutions around the sun. One paper estimated that the car has a 22% chance of crashing into Earth within the next 15 million years.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captures enormous aurora displays on Jupiter

The auroras flicker faster and brighter than those seen on Earth. This contrasts with earlier predictions that the lights would fade slowly over several minutes, providing insights into how Jupiter's magnetosphere operates.

Researchers report that Anthropic's Claude Mythos AI model has identified thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities across various software, including major operating systems and web browsers, and has suggested ways to exploit them.

Grace Hopper warned against prioritizing hardware purchases in future computing

Foreseeing the rising volume of data and the increasing demand for its processing and access, she advocated that organizations first map the total flow of information they require and then choose infrastructure to support it, rather than wastefully spending on the fastest computing technology and forcing software to compensate for unnecessary hardware or incorrect data.

Hacking the body for a future that didn't happen

Journalist Adi Robertson experimented with one of the most accessible biohacks: magnets. Having a tiny magnet in their right ring finger meant they could sense magnetic fields, attract small metal objects, and more. But magnets weaken over time, eroding this new sense. Such implants do more than offer a new way of interacting with the world, they also pose new complications, such as the inability to get an MRI.

The Majorana 1 chip may provide quantum computing using geometry-based qubits

Traditional quantum computers are incredibly fragile, with encoded information easily disrupted and requiring significant error correction systems. Microsoft’s approach involves storing data on a surface, which is more stable, but involves an elusive particle first theorized in 1938.

Earth's core is about 2.5 years younger than its surface according to relativity

Due to differences in where objects are located within gravitational fields, time will run at different rates, which has major impacts on technology that relies on synchronization. For example, GPS satellites run about 38 microseconds faster every day than clocks on Earth's surface, resulting in GPS discrepancies of about six miles, were it not for software corrections.

John Glenn's Friendship 7 flight finally put the US in orbit in February 1962

After the Soviets took the lead in the space race, John Glenn's three-orbit Friendship 7 mission on February 20, 1962, made him the first American to orbit Earth. This NASA anniversary piece delivers a minute-by-minute account—from launch delays to splashdown and recovery.

NASA purchased about 60% of all integrated circuits from 1961 to 1965

The US government adopted the new technology to support the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer, which would help astronauts fly to the moon. This drove manufacturing up and costs down, setting the stage for the modern computing era.

In 2022, a piece of Challenger was discovered on the ocean floor

While searching for World War II wreckage near Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a documentary, divers discovered debris on the seafloor that NASA later confirmed to be a piece of Space Shuttle Challenger wreckage. The piece is at least 15-by-15 feet in size and partially buried under sand.

See how computer memory really works—from binary bits to modern RAM

The video explains how computers store information as 1s and 0s, how RAM functions as fast working memory, and why systems utilize different types of storage. The video demonstrates how this process enables computers to operate.

How science explains déjà vu

Take a fun look at the science explaining the odd experience of déjà vu, which some theories suggest is actually a sign of a healthy brain.

View an historical mural depicting the NSF's impact across seven decades

From 1950 to 2020, the National Science Foundation supported discovery-based, exploratory research that led to numerous breakthroughs, including the development of supercomputing centers, 3D printing technologies, biometric identification systems, an understanding of vector-borne illnesses, a DNA amplification technique, mobile meteorology units, and scientific education and literacy programming.

NASA funded research into creating pizza with a 3D printer

The agency awarded a contract for the development of devices that can create edible structures from long-lasting dry powders when mixed with liquids or pastes. By delaying this integration until the time of consumption, food could last longer than the current six-month expiration of freeze-dried meals for Mars expeditions.

NASA plans to bring down the ISS at a location farthest from land

Point Nemo is located in the South Pacific Ocean at coordinates 48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W, approximately 2,688 kilometers (1,670 miles) from Ducie Island, Motu Nui, and Maher Island. The location has served as an underwater graveyard for hundreds of satellites and is expected to be harbor the International Space Station in 2030.

By 2024, Nvidia had become one of the world’s most valuable companies

Nvidia started as a graphics chip designer for PCs and consoles. This explainer traces its rise from early GPU innovation to powering AI breakthroughs and fueling the data centers behind today’s biggest tech platforms.

A laser energy system has allowed scientists to achieve fusion ignition

In 2022, scientists used lasers to create a powerful implosion that bound hydrogen isotopes together, releasing more energy than was input into the system. Research is ongoing to achieve this self-sustaining reaction with larger yields and energy gains.

The Antikythera mechanism: The oldest-known analog computer

A device now considered the world's oldest computer was pulled from a shipwreck more than 120 years ago. Known as the "Antikythera Mechanism," it is now believed to have allowed precise tracking of astronomical positions, and its sophistication overturned understanding of Ancient Greek capabilities.

The weather time machine

A fun interactive on how old ships’ logs are giving scientists new insights into the past and future of the Earth’s changing climate (w/maps and pictures).

Space travel sparked inventions we now use every day

Technologies developed for space exploration produced lasting spinoff innovations—from camera phones to memory foam—displaying how the space race reshaped everyday life here on Earth

DNA cassette tapes could store 36,000 terabytes of data

By translating binary code into the base-pair code found in genetic sequences, researchers in China are storing digital data on DNA-coated tapes for compact, durable, and energy-efficient storage. The tapes use a blend of polyester and nylon with barcode patterns for data addressing.