It was exciting and needed a signal from the giant space complex in Australia, but now NASA can applaud itself. It corrected its own mistake and once again fully established communication with the well-known Voyager 2 probe, which has been flying through space for almost fifty years and is the second most distant human object from Earth. According to NASA, it sent a signal “equivalent to an interstellar scream” to the probe from the Deep Space Network branch in Canberra.
Earth and the legendary Voyager 2 probe are separated by approximately twenty billion kilometers, so when NASA engineers instructed the probe to turn towards the blue planet, they had to wait thirty-seven hours for the result due to such a great distance. “Yesterday, the probe began transmitting science and telemetry data, indicating that it is operating normally and moving on the expected trajectory,” the researchers wrote.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration lost one of Voyager’s sister probes, number two, in July after it accidentally sent the wrong signal. The device thus drifted away from Earth and lost contact. The agency previously thought it unlikely that it would find the probe thanks to satellites in the Australian city of Canberra. Rather, she was counting on the fact that she would call herself in October as planned.
Although scientists have now reestablished contact with the space traveler, they expect to finally lose contact with it at the end of this decade. At the same time, the probe was not supposed to experience such a long journey. NASA launched Voyager 2 in 1977 and its mission was originally supposed to last only twelve years.
According to the US space agency, it is the only probe to fly past Uranus, where it discovered ten new moons and two rings of this gas giant. It reached interstellar space in 2018. The sister probe Voyager 1 is still in contact with Earth and is now almost twenty-four billion kilometers away.
Can you hear me now? 📡
Last night, I reestablished full communications with Earth thanks to some quick thinking and a lot of collaboration. I’m operating normally and remain on my expected trajectory. So glad I can finally phone home.
-V2— NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) August 4, 2023
2023-08-05 11:50:22
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