1 yr. ago • 97%

12.3 Billion Miles Away: NASA Has Lost Communication With Voyager 2 Spacecraft

scitechdaily.com 12.3 Billion Miles Away: NASA Has Lost Communication With Voyager 2 Spacecraft

NASA's Voyager 2 has lost communication with Earth due to an unintentional shift in its antenna direction. The next programmed orientation adjustment on October 15 is expected to restore communication, while Voyager 1 continues to operate as usual. A series of scheduled commands directed at NASA’

NASA’s Voyager 2 has lost communication with Earth due to an unintentional shift in its antenna direction. The next programmed orientation adjustment on October 15 is expected to restore communication, while Voyager 1 continues to operate as usual.

A series of scheduled commands directed at NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 led to an unintentional change in antenna direction. Consequently, the antenna moved 2 degrees off course from Earth, causing the spacecraft to lose its ability to receive commands or transmit data back to our planet.

75 comments

As a software engineer I feel for the person who accidentally sent the wrong value and caused an icon to be offline, potentially forever.

161
- It's not going to be offline forever. It'll reorient in a couple months. It was designed to do this when comms are lost. Still a little scary though.
  
  115
  
  This assumes their understanding of what caused the problem is accurate.
  
  Should it be ever so slightly imprecise, it could mean we lose contact forever.
  
  29
- rm -rf /telemetry-data
  
  22
  
  rm really predates the start of voyager 2.
  
  6
- They're going to have a very tough time sleeping between now and mid-October.
  
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  14
Unmonitored, it will slowly evolve into V'ger now!

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- Permanently Deleted
  
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  No may, they will definitely laugh at most of it. "What do you mean they had to use their eyes to watch videos? It wasn't just beamed directly into their head?"
  
  3
- It will get lonely and come back to find the creator. they always do.
  
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  🥲
  
  4
- Sometime between now and 2271!
  
  9
  
  That's too far into the future, maybe 2271
  
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- V'GINY
  
  3
  
  Mmmm... V'gussy...
  
  0
There's actually a group of alien teenagers following it and occasionally giving it a spin or nudge, just to fuck with us. They think its hilarious.

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- Fucking Neutrinos.
  
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  26
  
  ~181,400,000,000 American football fields
  ~97,930,000,000,000 bananas (assuming 8 inch bananas)
  
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  Permanently Deleted
  
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- Hero
  
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- Once you reach the billions, I don't imagine miles or kilometers make much of a difference anyway. It isn't like it helps visualize anything any better, does it?
  
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It'll reconnect and align back the next time it pings back to Earth. It was designed for this kind of contingency. It's very unlikely its lost forever.

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What a great project. Really puts perspective on what can be accomplished with public funds and vision. Meanwhile shit like Starlink exists and lasts maybe a couple of years. I wonder whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???

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- As much as I’d like to agree, those projects have very different goals and constraints.
  
  31
- As much as I hate Musk and most of his idiot projects, Starlink isn't that bad of an idea. Traditional SATCOM internet is more expensive for shittier service. From what I've read, Starlink has been fairly reliable, not overly expensive, and performance is pretty solid. Sure, in areas that already have "excellent" terrestrial internet providers available, it is pretty useless. But for rural areas, it's a godsend.
  
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  It’s 100% a good idea, it just shouldn’t be privately owned
  
  23
- Because they're low orbit communication satellites that require a lot of fuel to maintain said orbit, and are designed to deorbit pretty quickly so as to not pollute LEO with junk?
  
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- It isn't apple to apples. I saw a doc once on it where they interviewed the engineers involved and one was honest how he didn't really follow orders and padded it. If there were two options for a given component he picked the one that would last longer not the cheaper one. While other systems are designed to use as little material and cheap material as possible because they are intended to die after a few months and be mass produced.
  
  Additionally it didn't have vision. The original plan was to do the whole solar system. NASA was concerned about overpromising and budget issues so they told their staff to set the goal of up to Saturn only.
  
  I personally think there is plenty of room for both commercial and public. Ideally I would like to see public take on this very scientific no practical application stuff and projects that are too risky while commercial brings down the cost.
  
  2
  
  Commercial brings down the cost
  
  That is just another way of saying imposes negative externalities.
  
  I am wary of commercial anything, I don't really trust any company. We are still having major pollution events, some being planned to this day. And even some of the smallest, most seemingly benevolent startups sometimes turnout out to be so evil they are literally scamming people out of life.
  
  Maybe once we have real jail time for executives and the corporate death penalty by destruction of charter and a little bit of a time period without an event of awful corporate negligence, maybe then space commercialization might be a net benefit.
  
  3
Have you tried shouting at it?

8
- Or turning it off, waiting a bit, and back on again?
  
  4
Wonder if we could ping it off one of the other satellites we have around other planets to get a message out to it. Fingers crossed it's back in contact by October and we don't have to try weird shit though

7
- I would imagine 2° at 12 billion miles means it's almost certainly not pointing at anything man-made anymore, but I'm also not an astrophysicist so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯
  
  Being that far out I don't even think we could go out and fix it anymore
  
  19
  
  Lol no we most certainly cannot go out and fix it.
  
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  And even if it was pointed at random human equipment it’s so far away that you need a very special radio and antenna; not just any old satellite is necessarily going to do the trick. I think the signal strength is around -196db iirc so incredibly faint, and The antennas they use to communicate with voyager are massive.
  
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  Oh absolutely not. I'm just wondering if we could get stupidly lucky XD maybe it happens to be pointing at Voyager 1 (honestly idk how the trigonometry works out but maybe New Horizons?? Lol)
  
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  A 2° angle from 12 billion miles away would mean it's pointing about 12 billion miles (rounded to nearest billion because why not) away from the Earth in whatever axis it is off by.
  
  0
- If I read it correctly, the probe checks periodically, and if it loses contact, it uses the location of known stars to point its antenna back towards the Earth. If that doesn't work, it's gone.
  
  8
Communication wasn't "lost", it was thrown away through malpractice.

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- What? My guy it temporary. In a couple of months it will reorient itself automatically
  
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  We may be entitled to compensation?
  
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