NASA hears signal from Voyager 2 spacecraft after mistakenly cutting contact

https://apnews.com/article/nasa-voyager-spacecraft-regains-contact-addc3ad28f1d6bec03210b587f69663d

by ProAm • 3 years ago

12 3 3 years ago

apnews.com

runjake• 3 years ago

Unless I'm mathing wrong, it takes about 22.5 hours for the signal to travel to/from Voyager 2 to earth, one way.

15 billion miles / 186,282 miles per second = 80,414 seconds

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

Does this mean low gain is sending a heartbeat but high gain is still misdirected until reset in October? From the diagram on this page [1], it seems like dish positioning is critical to both antennas.

[1] https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/instruments/...

accrual• 3 years ago

If the command doesn't work - and controllers doubt it will - they'll have to wait until October for an automatic spacecraft reset. The antenna is only 2% off-kilter.

That's pretty smart to have such an automatic restart configured. I wonder what the details are - do they pre-program an antenna attitude for a specific moment in time, then do the reset if it's not overridden before the target date?

NASA hears signal from Voyager 2 spacecraft after mistakenly cutting contact

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