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.

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

At 15.4 billion miles away from Earth in interstellar space, Voyager 1 won't last much longer. In fact, NASA's flight engineers may have thought the 47-year-old mission had finally kicked the bucket when the uncrewed spacecraft recently went quiet.

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.