2023-08-05 05:08:02
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Voyager 2 space probe resumed communications with Earth on Friday following mission controllers corrected an error that led to weeks of silence.
Heading ever deeper into interstellar space billions of miles away, Voyager 2 stopped communicating two weeks ago. The controllers sent the wrong command to the 46-year-old spacecraft, tilting its antenna in a direction other than Earth.
On Wednesday, NASA’s Deep Space Network sent out a new order hoping to reorient the antenna, turning to the highest-powered transmitter on the massive satellite dish in Australia. Voyager 2’s antenna required only a 2 degree change in orientation.
It took more than 18 hours for the order to reach Voyager 2 — which is more than 19 billion kilometers (12 billion miles) from our planet — and another 18 hours to know it had been received.
The attempt with little chance of success paid off. On Friday, the space probe began to resume data transmission, according to officials at the California Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“I just sort of sighed. I melted into the chair,” project director Suzanne Dodd told The Associated Press.
“Voyager is back,” added Linda Spilker, project scientist.
Voyager 2 has continued to venture into space since its launch in 1977 to explore the outer solar system. Its twin, Voyager 1, launched two weeks later, is now the most distant probe from Earth, at 24 billion kilometers (15 billion miles) and still in communication with NASA.
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