That’s quite a distance for it to have flown at that point. In spite of the fact that it had sufficient power to carry out the order,
The fault protection system was activated when the crew attempted to direct the craft on October 16 to start a heater. This caused the craft to have the ability to carry out the instruction.
Two days later, on October 18, they came to the realization that there was a problem and that the spacecraft was unable to communicate with Earth via its X-band radio transmitter. Additionally, they had a difficult time picking up the spacecraft’s signal.
The crew in charge of the flight believes that the fault prevention mechanism had slowed down the pace at which the transmitter was sending back data, which resulted in a change to the X-band signal.
Later on the same day, engineers were able to detect the signal, and it looked that Voyager 1 was in a stable state. However, contact terminated the next day.
It is believed by the flight crew that the fault prevention mechanism of Voyager 1 had triggered twice over that period of time, resulting in the X-band transmitter being turned off.
