NASA Restores Contact With Voyager 2 Spacecraft After Mistake Led to Weeks of Silence

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft was again chatting it up Friday after flight controllers corrected a mistake that had led to weeks of silence.

Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar area billions of miles away, Voyager 2 stopped communicating two weeks in the past. Controllers despatched the mistaken command to the 46-year-old spacecraft and tilted its antenna away from Earth.

On Wednesday, NASA’s Deep House Community despatched a brand new command in hopes of repointing the antenna, utilizing the best powered transmitter on the large radio dish antenna in Australia. Voyager 2’s antenna wanted to be shifted a mere 2%.

It took greater than 18 hours for the command to achieve Voyager 2 — greater than 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) away — and one other 18 hours to listen to again. The lengthy shot paid off. On Friday, the spacecraft began returning information once more, in accordance with officers at California‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Voyager 2 has been hurtling via area since its launch in 1977 to discover the outer photo voltaic system. Launched two weeks later, its twin, Voyager 1, is now probably the most distant spacecraft — 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away — and nonetheless in touch.

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