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Communication between NASA and its Voyager 2 probe was lost due to an error from its operators.
Article informationAuthor, Megan FisherRole, BBC News
29 minutes ago
NASA has regained contact with its lost space probe, Voyager 2, a month earlier than expected.
A wrong command issued last July to the probe, which was launched into space for exploratory purposes in 1077, changed its location and then lost contact with it.
NASA picked up the signal last Tuesday from the spacecraft thanks to a “interstellar cry” – powerful electronic commands – that redirected the antenna back to Earth.
NASA was pinning hopes that the probe would reset itself by itself last October.
It took the mission managers about 37 hours to figure out whether the interstellar commands they sent succeeded in redirecting Voyager 2, which is swimming in space billions of miles from Earth.
Susan Dodd, Voyager project manager, told AFP that the crews used the “highest power transmitter” to communicate with the spacecraft so that the message would arrive at the right time and in “the best conditions”, ensuring the probe would respond to the command.
Since July 21, the probe has not been able to receive commands or transmit data back to NASA’s Deep Space Network, a collection of giant radio antennas around the world, and the spacecraft does not receive commands from ground control devices.
On August 4, NASA confirmed that it had received data from the spacecraft, which it said had begun operating normally.
The agency expects the spacecraft, loaded with scientific instruments, to continue its planned trajectory around the universe.
On Monday, the US space agency said its huge dish in the Australian capital, Canberra, was trying to detect any stray signals from Voyager 2.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Voyager missions, said the antenna sends the correct command to Voyager 2 over and over again, hoping to contact the probe.
The probe is programmed to reset its position several times each year to keep the antenna pointed at Earth. The spacecraft is scheduled to perform its next reorientation on October 15, a procedure that NASA was pinning its hopes on as a last resort if all attempts failed.
Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, are the only two spacecraft operating outside the heliosphere, the protective bubble around the sun made of particles and magnetic fields. The two spacecraft reached interstellar space in 2018 and 2012, respectively.
The two probes were designed to take advantage of the rare alignment of the outer planets, which occurs approximately every 176 years, to explore Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have flown above the planets Neptune and Uranus, while Voyager 1 is now about 15 billion miles from Earth, making it the most distant spacecraft in human history.
Once the probes run out of energy – which is expected to be after 2025 – they will continue to roam through space.
