“it takes almost 23 hours for a command to reach the craft and another 23 hours for its response to reach scientists.”
A routine heater command tripped Voyager 1’s fault protection, and the probe dropped to a backup S-band transmitter idle since 1981. Its signal is fainter, and the craft is more than 15 billion miles out. Every fix takes a 46-hour round trip. NASA expects enough power for the science instruments only until 2025, so each of these scares spends time the mission no longer has.