Voyager I located by volunteers at decades-old radio telescope in Drenthe

Volunteers at the decades-old Dwingeloo radio telescope in Drenthe picked up a signal from the Voyager 1 space probe, which was launched in 1977 to visit the outer planets of the solar system and then sent out into interstellar space. The Voyager 1 is now almost 25 billion kilometers away from Earth, over four times as far as Pluto, so the signal is weak, but there, the organization behind the telescope reported.

According to the organization, the Voyager 1 is currently the furthest and fastest-moving man-made object in interstellar space. “Its radio signals, which travel at the speed of light, currently take 23 hours to reach Earth.”

The Dwingeloo telescope, which was built in 1956, had to make some adjustments to pick up the Voyager 1’s signals, which emit at a higher frequency than the Dutch telescope was designed for. The volunteers used orbital data from the Voyager 1, corrected for the Doppler shift in frequency caused by the motion of Earth and the Voyager 1, and were delighted to pick up the first signal on December 8. They were able to see the signal live from the observatory.

NASA uses dishes from the Deep Space Network, designed for higher frequencies and with a diameter of 70 meters, to communicate with the Voyager 1. The Dwingeloo telescope is significantly smaller, with a diameter of 25 meters. The volunteers are, therefore, beyond thrilled. “Only a few telescopes have received this signal.”