NASA's upgraded deep space radio antenna reconnects with Voyager 2 probe

[Shawn Knight]

NASA recently made contact with the distant Voyager 2 spacecraft for the first time since March.

The probe left Earth a little over two weeks before its twin, Voyager 1, way back in the summer of 1970. After completing its final primary objectives in the late 80s, the spacecraft entered into an extended mission to study interstellar space.

Voyager 2 is only the second man-made craft to reach interstellar space, achieving the feat in late 2018. Its twin did so in 2012. According to NASA's mission status page, the craft is currently more than 11.67 billion miles from Earth and is traveling at an estimated rate of around 34,390 mph.

Deep Space Station 43 is the only radio antenna on Earth that can send commands to Voyager 2. The 70-meter-wide (230-foot-wide) antenna is located in Canberra, Australia, and has been offline since March while workers conducted repairs and made upgrades.

Voyager 2 has been regularly sending status updates and science data to NASA during the downtime but operators haven’t been able to send commands to the probe since earlier this year.

Work won’t be finished on the radio antenna until February but things reached a point late last month where NASA was able to send a command to the craft and received a signal confirming it had received the call.

Masthead credit: Steven Tritton

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https://www.techspot.com/news/87434-nasa-upgraded-deep-space-radio-antenna-reconnects-voyager.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Just my luck to be born too late to discover America, but too early to explore space.

 

[gmorita]

Minor correction. The Voyagers were launched in the summer of 1977. Contrary to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there were only three probes made not 6. Two are in space and the third was kept at JPL as a platform for running diagnostics or testing out programming changes

 

[p51d007]

I'm just waiting, too bad I won't be around, when they come back as Veeger

 

[VitalyT]

Ah come-on, that's only 17.4 light hours away, after 43 years of travelling? My grandma moves faster than this...

When you consider that the closest known habitable candidate (Proxima Centauri b) is 4.2 light years away, you'll believe that we are never gonna get there.

 

[Uncle Al]

You can bet that AT&T had nothing to do with that call!

 

[NicktheWVAHick]

My RTX 3090 is dead after just one month. How can the Voyager spacecraft still be working after nearly 45 years at -273C?

 

[Endymio]

My RTX 3090 is dead after just one month. How can the Voyager spacecraft still be working after nearly 45 years at -273C?

Cool your video card that thoroughly, and it will last at least as long.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Clearly Nvidia should have used Voyager's 470W Plutonium dioxide power source for your 3090. You could almost run the EVGA FTW 3090 with beta BIOS on that. Almost.

 

[PEnnn]

My RTX 3090 is dead after just one month. How can the Voyager spacecraft still be working after nearly 45 years at -273C?

The second one was not built by nVidia.