“Voyager 2” has been traveling through space for more than 45 years and has already delivered spectacular images. According to NASA, contact has now been lost. But there is hope that it can be restored.
The US space agency NASA has lost contact with the space probe “Voyager 2”. It was said that there was a mistake: flight controllers sent an incorrect command more than a week ago, causing the spacecraft’s antenna to be pointed two degrees away from Earth.
Since then, the unmanned aerial vehicle, which is supposed to explore the outer planetary system, has been racing deeper and deeper into interstellar space without controllers having access to it. “Voyager 2” is currently unable to send data to Earth or receive commands from the control center, NASA said.
“Voyager 2” is about 19 billion kilometers away from Earth. It takes more than 18 hours for a signal from that distance to reach Earth.
Hope for antenna in Australia
Help could come from Australia: This week, a huge parabolic antenna in Canberra, Australia, will irradiate the area around “Voyager 2” with the right command – in the hope that it will hit the probe, as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that directs the “Voyager” missions. The antenna in Canberra is part of NASA’s global network of deep space stations.
If that doesn’t succeed, NASA must hope for an automatic reset of the probe in October. He should restore communication, it said.
space expert is confident
“Something like this is a nightmare for every satellite operator,” said Ulrich Walter, ex-astronaut and professor of space technology at the Technical University of Munich. “If you make a typo there, then a loss of contact can happen.”
Walter also sees good chances that NASA will be able to contact “Voyager 2” again by October at the latest. After a period of time, all probes would automatically point to Earth.
NASA owes this post-colored image of Saturn from 1980 to “Voyager 2”. In the meantime, the probe has moved about 19 billion kilometers away from Earth.
In space since 1977
“Voyager 2” (in German: traveler) was launched on August 20, 1977, a few weeks before its identical twin “Voyager 1”. It remains in contact with Earth and is about 24 billion kilometers away. This makes Voyager 1 the most distant space probe known to mankind.
Both probes are unmanned. The original goal of the mission was for both probes to explore the planets of the outer solar system. But NASA extended the mission so that the probes eventually flew beyond the edge of the solar system. Now they are collecting data from interstellar space.