Voyager 2 continues to be broadcasting a “heartbeat” from deep space after a communications breakdown.
NASA’s long-running Voyager 2 mission, which launched from Earth in 1977, routinely sent a “carrier signal” picked up by the agency’s Deep Space Network, agency officials stated Monday (Aug. 1).
“A bit like hearing the spacecraft’s ‘heartbeat,’ it confirms the spacecraft continues to be broadcasting, which engineers expected,” officials with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) stated on Twitter. Canberra, Australia’s DSN Twitter account confirmed the news as well.
JPL will next send a command to Voyager 2 asking the spacecraft to point itself to Earth. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll must wait until October, when the spacecraft’s onboard software routinely tells it to reset its direction,” the statement added.
Related: NASA Voyager 2 spacecraft extends its interstellar science mission for 3 more years
The spacecraft, which is about 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth, lost contact with our planet after a set of commands by accident moved Voyager 2’s antenna two degrees away from Earth.
The error severed the link to the bottom antennas of the DSN, stopping Voyager 2 from sending back data in interstellar space. Engineers even have, thus far, not been capable of send commands to the spacecraft. But Voyager 2’s programming already has backup enabled, because the spacecraft routinely resets its orientation a number of times a 12 months in case of troubles like this.
Voyager 2 flew to space from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 20, 1977. After swinging by the 4 gas giant planets of the solar system between the Nineteen Seventies and Nineties, it entered interstellar space on Dec. 10, 2018.
Its twin craft Voyager 1 can be operational, flying distant at about 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth. It was the primary object to maneuver beyond the gravitational influence of our star, the sun, in 2012.
The missions are slowly losing power from their nuclear radioisotope generators, but engineers have made several alterations to preserve their systems where possible. The warmers have been shut off, for instance, and in April 2023 engineers disabled Voyager 2’s surge protector (or voltage regulator).
These steps remove a little bit of backup for the spacecraft while allowing their power supplies to last more. The 2023 step alone has postponed one in every of the instrument shutdowns for Voyager 2 by three years, extending space data collection until at the least 2026, officials said on the time.