NASA finally made contact with its 46-year-old Voyager 2 spacecraft on Friday after several weeks of stillness. After the flight controller fixed the error that caused weeks of quiet, communication was once again established.
Due to a conflicting signal, NASA’s Voyager 2 was lost in space, but after two weeks of silence, communication with the spacecraft was established thanks to a command known as a “interstellar shout” that was sent billions of miles away.
When managers unintentionally sent a directive to shift Voyager 2’s antenna 2 degrees away from Earth, the spacecraft abruptly stopped receiving or transmitting communications in July, nearly 46 years after it first orbited the planet.
The mission team compared the carrier signal to a “heartbeat”; it was too faint to identify the probe but confirmed it was still in operation, according to NASA’s Deep Space Network, which is made up of enormous radio antennas all across the planet.
According to NASA, Canberra’s Deep Space Network facility “sent the equivalent of an interstellar’shout'” to Voyager 2 — a round-trip transmission that took about 18.5 hours each way for the command to reach the probe and to receive a response.
Voyager 2 was launched in 1977
Since its launch in 1977, Voyager 2 has been speeding through space in an effort to study the outer solar system. The most distant spacecraft at the moment is Voyager 1, its twin, which is 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away. It’s still in communication.
It’s important to note that the two-week break in communication between NASA and Voyager 2 is one of the longest ever. According to project manager Suzanne Dodd, Voyager will continue to operate successfully through the spacecraft’s 50th anniversary of launch in 2027 because of the plutonium it contains.
Some facts regarding interstellar space have been learned thanks to the spacecraft. They have recently returned information on the interstellar magnetic field and the amount of cosmic rays, among other scientific nuggets.
The NASA crew has been very cleverly eking out every last little watt, so experts are hoping that one of the twins makes it to 50. However, these unfortunate incidents still cast a shadow before the 50-year milestone is reached.