Voyager 2 has restored its communication with Earth months earlier than expected.
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Nasa is back in full contact with its lost Voyager 2 probe months earlier than expected, the space agency said.

    A signal was picked up on Tuesday but thanks to an “interstellar shout” - a powerful instruction - its antenna is now back facing Earth.

    Staff used the “highest-power transmitter” to send a message to the spacecraft and timed it to be sent during “the best conditions” so the antenna lined up with the command, Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd told AFP.

    After communications were lost, the probe had been unable to receive commands or send back data to Nasa’s Deep Space Network - an array of giant radio antennas across the world.

    On Monday, the space agency said its huge dish in Australia’s capital, Canberra, was trying to detect any stray signals from Voyager 2.

    The probes were designed to take advantage of a rare alignment of outer planets, which occurs about every 176 years, to explore Jupiter and Saturn.

    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Once both spacecraft run out of power - expected sometime after 2025 - they will continue roaming through space.

    Why does thinking about this make me a bit sad?

    • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
      0·
      1 year ago

      They will likely be the last evidence that the human race ever existed.

      In 2-3 billion years the sun will leave the main sequence steady state it has been in. This will end in it turning into a red giant, and engulfing earth and destroying all record we existed.

      Meanwhile, the journey of Voyager 1 and 2 will have only just begun. They will continue moving through the expanding universe for at least 3,000,000 Billion years.

      • chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.netEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Wouldn’t friction (however little in deep outer space) eventually decay the crafts way before Earth is engulfed by the Sun?

        • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          Interspace is empty on a level that is hard to imagine.

          There are 2.652×10^25 molecules in one m^3 of air.

          That is 26520000000000000000000000.

          In intellar space?

          The is 1.

          IE: the probe would hit more atoms in one second on earth moving at 1 m/s than it would travelling the entire age of the universe so far through interstellar space.

          Even the space between the planets is thick with matter by comparison.