Monday, August 7, 2023

Contact Reestablished With Voyager 2 Spacecraft

From Fox News:

    NASA has reestablished contact with its interstellar spacecraft Voyager 2 after an incorrect command pointed the spacecraft away from Earth, cutting off data for about two weeks.

    An incorrect command sent to Voyager 2 on July 21 left the mission science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California unable to get data from the spacecraft.

    NASA keeps in contact with the twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 through its system of ground antennas known as the Deep Space Network (DSN). NASA said it lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 21 after a series of planned commands sent to the spacecraft caused an unintended shift in its antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth.

    The data blackout would have continued until an automatic correction in October, but teams used the Deep Space Network antenna in Australia to send the correct command hoping to hit the intended target more than 12.3 billion miles from Earth.

2 comments:

Weekend Reading--A Knowledge Dump and More

 Greg Elifritz has posted a new Weekend Knowledge Dump   with links to articles and a podcast on a variety of self-defense and prepping topi...