NASA makes contact with Voyager 2 again after ‘interstellar scream’ – 04/08/2023 – Science

NASA managed to re-establish full contact with the distant Voyager 2 space probe thanks to an “interstellar scream” that straightened the orientation of its antenna, the US space agency said on Friday (4).

Launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets and serve as humanity’s beacon to the universe, the spacecraft is currently more than 19.9 billion kilometers from Earth, far beyond the solar system.

A series of commands sent to the spacecraft on July 21 caused the antenna to mistakenly drift by two degrees, compromising its ability to send and receive signals from Earth and jeopardizing its mission.

The situation was not expected to be resolved until at least October 15, when Voyager 2 was scheduled to perform an automated realignment maneuver.

But on Tuesday, engineers enlisted the help of several ground-based observatories that form the Deep Space Network (DSN) to detect a carrier wave or “heartbeat” from Voyager 2, although the signal still was too weak to read the data it carried.

In a new update on Friday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which built and operates the probe, said it succeeded in a long-range effort to send instructions that righted the spacecraft. .

“The Deep Space Network facility at the Canberra agency” in Australia sent out the equivalent of an “interstellar scream,” JPL reported.

“With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the instructions to reach Voyager, it took mission controllers 37 hours to know if the order had worked,” the lab added.

“The Deep Space Network used the highest power transmitter to send the order and timed it during the best antenna tracking pass conditions, in order to maximize the spacecraft’s possible reception of the order,” Suzanne Dodd told AFP. , director of the Voyager project.

The spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data at 12:29 pm ET on Aug. .

beacon of humanity

Voyager 2 left the Sun’s protective magnetic bubble called the heliosphere in December 2018 and is currently traveling through the space between the stars.

Before leaving the solar system, it explored Jupiter and Saturn, and became the first and so far only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune.

Voyager 1, twin of Voyager 2, was humanity’s first probe to enter interstellar space, in 2012, and is currently nearly 24 billion kilometers from Earth.

The two Voyager spacecraft carry “Golden Records”, 12-inch gold-plated copper disks designed to transmit the planet’s history to extraterrestrials.

Currently, the two probes continue to transmit scientific data, but their batteries are expected to run out sometime after 2025.

Afterwards, they will continue wandering through the Milky Way, probably for eternity, in silence.