space travel
Contact to “Voyager 2” restored
Engineers work on the “Voyager 2”. In the meantime, NASA had lost contact with the spacecraft. photo
© -/NASA/JPL-Caltech/dpa
The Voyager 2 space probe has been away from Earth for around 46 years. Then the contact breaks off due to an incorrect command – until Nasa scientists hear an “interstellar scream”.
The US space agency Nasa has contacted the spacecraft “Voyager 2″. After around two weeks without contact, all communication is running again – thanks to “some quick thinking and a lot of cooperation”, Nasa said on Friday (local time). The space probe is working normally and is still on its predicted level Route.
An “interstellar scream” helped, according to NASA. A space communication station in Canberra, Australia, sent the probe a signal over a distance of around 20 billion kilometers and around 19 hours to orient its antenna back to earth. 37 hours later, the confirmation came back that the action had worked. Contact was lost when a series of scheduled commands on July 21 accidentally resulted in the spacecraft’s antenna being pointed two degrees away from Earth.
“Voyager 1” (in German: traveler) was launched on September 5, 1977, “Voyager 2” on August 20, 1977. Both probes are unmanned. The probes were intended to explore planets in the outer solar system – but eventually even flew beyond the limits of the solar system.