Engineers are currently trying to solve the issue as the ageing spacecraft explores uncharted cosmic territory along the solar system's outer reaches.

Voyager 1 is currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth at about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometres) away, while its twin Voyager 2 has travelled more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometres) from our planet. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Initially designed to last five years, the Voyager probes are the two longest-operating spacecraft in history. Their exceptionally long lifespans mean that both spacecraft have provided additional insights about our solar system and beyond after achieving their preliminary goals of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune decades ago.

Voyager 1 has three onboard computers, including a flight data system that collects information from the spacecraft’s science instruments and bundles it with engineering data that reflects the current health status of Voyager 1. Mission control on Earth receives that data in binary code.

Voyager 1’s flight data system now appears to be stuck on auto-repeat. The mission team first noticed the issue 14 November when the flight data system’s telecommunications unit began sending back a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes.

While the spacecraft can still receive and carry out commands transmitted from the mission team, a problem with that telecommunications unit means no science or engineering data from Voyager 1 is being returned to Earth.

The Voyager team sent commands over the weekend for the spacecraft to restart the flight data system, but no usable data has come back yet, according to NASA.

NASA engineers are currently trying to gather more information about the underlying cause of the issue before determining the next steps to correct.