The far-off Voyager 2 probe has signalled that it is in “good health” after mission control unintentionally lost contact with it for a few days, according to NASA’s most recent statement.
NASA hears from Voyager 2: Launched in 1977 to serve as a beacon for humanity in the cosmos, it and its twin, Voyager 1, are currently traveling through interstellar space more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion km) beyond Earth.
According to a recent report from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a set of intended commands issued to Voyager 2 on July 21 “inadvertently caused the antenna to point two degrees away from Earth.”
The problem prevented it from sending or receiving information to its mission control. They did not anticipate fixing it until it carried out an autonomous reorientation maneuver on October 15.
Late Monday, NASA’s Sun & Space account announced on social media that they had restored contact.
“The Deep Space Network has picked up a carrier signal from @NASAVoyager 2, letting us know that the spacecraft is in good health,” the organisation announced.
NASA’s global network of enormous radio antennas is known as the Deep Space Network.
The Voyager missions are a component of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory even though JPL created and manages the spacecraft.
In December 2018, Voyager 2 exited the heliosphere, the Sun’s magnetic bubble of protection, and is now moving through the region between the stars.
It became the first and only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune before leaving our solar system.
In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft ever to travel beyond our solar system. It is now about 15 billion miles away from Earth.
However, Both Voyager probes carry the “Golden Records”—12-inch, gold-plated copper disks designed to tell extraterrestrial life about our planet.