In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2: a pair of spacecraft tasked with touring Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune by taking advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets that only happens once every 175 years.

Voyager 1 relays messages to NASA’s mission control team after losing contact due to a technical issue. The aging spacecraft is relying on an old radio transmitter.

In August 2012, Voyager 1 made history as it entered interstellar space, the region between stars, filled with material ejected by other stars that died millions of years ago. Voyager 1 and 2 are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside of the heliosphere, the region of space affected by the sun 's constant flow of material.

Following recent communication issues, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft resorted to a backup radio transmitter that has been inactive since 1981.

The space agency reported Voyager 1 recently turned off one of its two radio transmitters, and the team is currently working to figure out what caused it.

Nasa scientists are celebrating as, after a period of silence, the craft recently called home again using a bit of kit that it hasn't used for more than forty years.

The 47-year-old NASA Voyager 1 fell back on a radio transmitter it hadn’t used since 1981 to ping home base after a technical issue caused a days-long communication stall between Earth and the farthest-ever recorded spacecraft.