In 1990, its primary mission over, Voyager 1 was instructed to point its camera at Earth, or the Pale Blue Dot, 6 billion kilometers away. VOYAGER 1 has been beaming data to Earth since 1977. But members of mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, are as excited as ever.
Cause of Elevated A1c Levels. The higher your blood sugar levels and the longer your blood sugar remains high, the more excess sugar is present in the blood and the more opportunities this excess sugar has to bond to hemoglobin.
A1c measures the quantity of âglycated hemoglobin,â which refers to sugar attached to a red blood cell protein called hemoglobin. The number is reported as a percentage of the total hemoglobin in the blood. If a person consistently has higher blood glucose levels over time, A1c levels go up because more red blood cells are coated with sugar. The test is representative of a 2 to 3-month average because once a red blood cell becomes coated with sugar, the link is irreversible.