NASA’s ‘shout’ restores communication with Voyager 2
The Voyager mission team at NASA has regained connection with Voyager 2 after losing contact with the spacecraft, which has been operational for almost 46 years, using a long-distance “shout” manoeuvre.
According to a report released by the space agency, “the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data on August 4 at 12:29 a.m. EDT, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.”
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On July 21, Voyager 2 received commands that unintentionally caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth. Due to the minute shift, Voyager 2 was unable to communicate or receive data from mission control from its position more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion km) out in interstellar space.
The Deep Space Network, a global network of enormous radio antennae that enables NASA to connect with missions around the cosmos, allowed the mission crew to successfully locate Voyager 2’s “heartbeat” or “carrier signal” earlier this week.
Since the three enormous dishes are equally spaced apart and our globe rotates, one of them is always in contact with a different spacecraft. two radios
RELATED: NASA’s ‘shout’ restores communication with Voyager 2
After locating the heartbeat, the researchers used the Canberra station to communicate with Voyager 2 by sending it an interstellar “shout,” which is simply an amplified radio broadcast, with instructions telling it to turn its antenna towards Earth.
According to Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the team believed there was a “low probability” that the command would succeed given the great distance between Earth and Voyager 2 and the antenna’s improper orientation for receiving a radio signal.
The signal must travel throughout the solar system in one direction to reach the spaceship, which takes around 18.5 hours. It took the mission controllers a total of 37 hours to discover that the yell was successful.
Voyager 2 is already set up to realign itself many times a year to keep its antenna pointed in the general direction of our planet, even if the Earth-based signals had not reached the spaceship. The following reset was arranged for October 15. However, the team didn’t
The aged twin probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, which were both launched in 1977, have had problems before. The team has gradually shut off instrumentation in order to conserve power and extend their missions as these “senior citizens” continue to explore the cosmos. Both spacecraft have experienced unanticipated problems and dropouts along the route, including a seven-month communication breakdown between Voyager 2 and the Deep Space Network in 2020.
Nearly 15 billion miles (24 billion km) away from Earth, Voyager 1 is still functioning normally and maintaining contact with the Deep Space Network.
The only spacecraft to function outside the heliosphere, the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends far beyond the orbit, both probes are in interstellar space.
