NASA’s Voyager 2 probe receives first orders from March, sending Hello back

The Voyager 2 study, One of NASA’s most well-traveled spacecraft, has not been able to communicate with Earth for the past eight months. Voyager 2 orbits alone on the edge of galaxy, collecting data 11.6 billion miles from Earth and sending it back to us.

But we could not pick up the phone and call back.

The only radio antenna that can communicate with the Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43) in Australia is offline, while NASA completes a series of hardware upgrades. Some transmitters in DSS 43 have not been replaced for more than 47 years. According to NASA. To test the new hardware, Dish added Voyager 2 on Oct. 29 with some commands. This is the first time a signal has been transmitted to the spacecraft since mid-March.

Because the investigation was so far away, the communications team had to wait more than 34 hours.

Of course, Voyager 2 received commands and sent “hello” back without any problems.

Fortunately, Voyager 2 happily did not know everything Scary things They have occurred on Earth since March.

NASA’s Deep Space Network allows Earth-bound scientists to interact with astronauts and rovers throughout the solar system. The network consists of three large telescopes located in the United States, Spain and Australia.

But American and Spanish telescopes could not communicate with Voyager 2 because of its path. When Neptune’s moon was passed by Triton, it was ejected from the plane of the solar system. If you think of the solar system as a plate, the study is like a pea rolling around a potato and starting to travel towards the ground. From that point on, Northern Hemisphere telescopes cannot send a signal – but DSS43 can.

With the cosmic call, engineers and scientists can hope that hardware improvements will not disrupt our ability to interact with in-depth space exploration.

“This experimental interaction with Voyager 2 definitely says things have to do with the work we do,” said Brad Arnold, project manager for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory ‘Deep Space Network. The updates are scheduled to be completed by 2021.

Although the trial is now 43 years old, it continues to truck. A year ago, Voyager 2 Scientists have released new data collected by the study when they went into galactic space. Earlier this year, before DSS43 was taken offline, Voyager 2 Faced a stumbling block that closed its scientific instruments But it quickly turned online and was ready to continue its tests.