NASA's distant Voyager 2 probe has sent a "heartbeat" signal to Earth after mission control mistakenly cut contact, the U.S. space agency said Tuesday.
Launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets and serve as a beacon of humanity to the wider universe, it is currently more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from our planet -- well beyond the solar system.
A series of planned commands sent to Voyager 2 on July 21 "inadvertently caused the antenna to point two degrees away from Earth," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said in a recent update.
This left it unable to transmit data or receive commands to its mission control -- a situation that was not expected to be resolved until it conducted an automated re-orientation maneuver on October 15.
But on Tuesday, Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd told AFP the team enlisted the help of the Deep Space Network -- an international array of giant radio antennas, plus a few that orbit Earth -- in a last-ditch effort to re-establish contact sooner.
To their surprise, "this was successful in that we see the 'heartbeat' signal from the spacecraft," she said. "So we know the spacecraft is alive and operating. This buoyed our spirits."
The team is "now generating a new command to attempt to point the spacecraft antenna toward Earth," Dodd added, although she said there is only a "low probability" it will work.
Still, given October 15 is a long way away, NASA will keep trying to send up these commands.
While JPL built and operates Voyager spacecraft, the missions are now part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory.
Voyager 2 left the protective magnetic bubble provided by the Sun, called the heliosphere, in December 2018, and is currently traveling through the space between the stars.
Before leaving our solar system, it explored Jupiter and Saturn, and became the first and so far only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 1 was mankind's first spacecraft to enter the interstellar medium, in 2012, and is currently almost 15 billion miles from Earth.
Both Voyager spacecraft carry "Golden Records" -- 12-inch, gold-plated copper disks intended to convey the story of our world to extraterrestrials.
These include a map of our solar system, a piece of uranium that serves as a radioactive clock allowing recipients to date the spaceship's launch, and symbolic instructions that convey how to play the record.
The contents of the record, selected for NASA by a committee chaired by legendary astronomer Carl Sagan, include encoded images of life on Earth, as well as music and sounds that can be played using an included stylus.
For now, the Voyagers continue to transmit back scientific data, though their power banks are expected to be eventually depleted, sometime after 2025.
They will then continue to wander the Milky Way, potentially for eternity, in silence.
© 2023 AFP
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ClippetyClop
The Voyager missions cost less than a billion dollars. Voyager 2 is still the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 1 still has another 25,000 years before it leaves our solar system, and it’s signal strength upon reaching earth is a billionth of a billionth of one watt.
The Voyager program has fascinated me since it was launched when I was a kid in 1977. One of mankind’s most imaginative and brilliant projects.
Harry_Gatto
That radio signal from Voyager took almost 20 hours to reach Earth.
RareReason
Yet you know so little about it.
Even the same article states...
Thunderbird2
Spock must have worked his magic on V'Ger to get it going again lol
Peter14
Agree this article says both voyagers have left our solar system and are in interstellar space.
It is an awesome thing that man made objects are now traveling between the stars and may one day be found by other intelligent life forms. I hope they are benevolent and friendly and appreciate the enormous achievement their finding a voyager craft entails, from both sides.
ClippetyClop
I know the difference between solar wind and Solar System.
It will remain in the solar system until it emerges from the Oort Cloud.
Pluto is only 1 / 50,000th of the way to the edge of our Solar System. It’s not as compact and neatly defined as you imagine.
Desert Tortoise
Pluto is 40 AU from the Sun. The Solar System extends 122 AU.
starpunk
Good ol' Voyager 2. When it visited Jupiter in 1979 and discovered volcanic activity on its moon Io, I saw a picture in a National Geographic article of this young lady NASA scientist smiling and pointing to the image on her Apple computer screen. I saw right then with her to be working for NASA that she had a degree and was smart. I wanted to marry her, I was 13 years old.
Voyager 2 visited Saturn in 1981 and we learned more about that planet than ever in history. The Moody Blues had a #1 album with 'Long Distance Voyager' and a local DJ quipped by saying ;Long Distance Voyager 2'. Uh-huh.
It visited planet Uranus in early 1986, when Comet Halley was also competing for attention. The planet name's pronunciation is the subject of childish jokes in the English language and during that time I saw ads in magazines to join the 'Up Uranus Club' complete with T-shirts depicting a middle finger holding the planet on it.
In 1989 it visited Neptune and I was in college. As a student I got to see live NASA coverage from the proble on an array of Apple computers, a setup we now call an intranet. A few years later, these intranets would be combined into what we now know as the internet. History in the making of space exploration and information science at the same time!
I have a BA degree in Computer and Science from that university and that's how I know.
And on the side, that's also how I knew about trump sassing off his motormouth about Hillary Clinton's emails in 2016 was totally bogus, just like he is. He didn't put up or shut up. Of course he certainly can't do the latter, can he?
Voyager 2 has marked some very important milestones in scientific progress history, mankind's history and mine.