NASA Reestablishes , Connection With Distant , Voyager 1 Space Probe.<br />The news comes after engineers at <br />the agency worked for months <br />attempting to fix the 46-year-old probe.<br />In December, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) <br />said that the probe, now a staggering 15 billion miles <br />away from Earth, was transmitting gibberish code. .<br />On April 23, the JPL announced that <br />the team was once again receiving <br />usable data from the spacecraft.<br />Currently, the probe is only <br />transmitting data regarding the status <br />of the ship's engineering systems.<br />The next step is to enable <br />the spacecraft to begin <br />returning science data again, JPL statement, via 'The Guardian'.<br />'The Guardian' reports that Voyager 1 has been in <br />operation for nearly half a century after launching <br />in 1977 with the goal of studying Jupiter and Saturn.<br />In August of 2012, Voyager crossed into <br />interstellar space, becoming the first <br />human-made object to leave the solar system.<br />The probe is currently traveling at a staggering <br />36,800 miles per hour through space.<br />NASA plans to collect data from the two <br />Voyager spacecraft for a few more years, <br />but the space agency expects to lose <br />contact with the probes within the next decade
