By: Kerry Ding
More than three weeks ago, after a control error, the Voyager 2, a spacecraft made to study the outer planets, shifted its antenna away from Earth, making it impossible to contact for two weeks. Just a week ago, scientists finally reconnected to it. The Voyager 2 has been shooting through space for nearly 46 years now. Since they lost contact three weeks ago, the scientists surveying it have been scared that something might happen to the spacecraft, especially when it’s so close to its 50th anniversary.
However, just a week ago, the scientists at NASA reconnected to the lonely spacecraft. NASA used its most prominent long-distance caller, the Deep Space Network. “The Deep Space Network – or DSN – is NASA’s international array of giant radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions, plus a few that orbit Earth,” NASA says. They discovered that the antenna that shifted was only slightly angled wrong and only 2 degrees off. The Deep Space Network’s call managed to get to the Voyager in 18 hours, and 18 hours later, they got the confirmation message that the call had worked. “On Friday, the spacecraft started returning data, according to officials at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.” said the New York Times. This meant that since Friday, Voyager 2 could start communicating with NASA again.
NASA was relieved, and things mostly went back to normal. Many had been worried that this inconvenience could make us lose connection with the Voyager 2 forever before it could reach its 50th anniversary. But for now, their plutonium for its energy generator still works. As a result, the Voyager 2 will likely live to see its 50th anniversary.
“We’ve been very clever over the last ten years to eke out every single little watt,” Suzanne Dodd, the Director for the Interplanetary Network, said. “Hopefully, one of them will make it to 50. But they are old, and certainly events like this one that just happened scare the dickens out of me, as far as making that type of a milestone.” Maybe, this little bump would just create a milestone in the history of Voyager 2. But this experience was still worrying and might teach us to be more careful.
Sources:
https://rps.nasa.gov/resources/18/voyager-2-launch/
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/services/networks/deep_space_network/about
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-11-me-11793-story.html