Amateur Astronomers Pinpoint Voyager 1 Using Vintage 1950s Telescope After Glitch

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Voyager 1 is currently exploring interstellar space at a distance of 15.5 billion miles (24.9 billion kilometers) away from Earth. Communicating with the farthest human-made object can be challenging, but not for a telescope that's built to listen to lower 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. Dwingeloo, built in the 1950s, joins an elite group of telescopes able to detect Voyager's faint radio signals from deep space, a crucial capability when NASA's antennas aren't able to communicate with the spacecraft.

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

The iconic Voyager 1 has been feeding 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 Metis, as well as five new moons and a new ring called the G-ring around Saturn.

The spunky Lucy mission will make a second gravity assist of our world tonight as it heads off on its hunt for the solar system's origins.