NASA reestablishes contact with 43-year-old Voyager 2
NASA has reestablished contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft as it travels more than 1.6 billion miles from Earth – after the probe was left flying solo for seven months while repairs were made to the radio antenna in Australia they use to control it.
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Mission operators sent a series of commands to the 43-year-old probe using the ground-based Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43) antenna, which established a signal confirming the ‘call’ was received.
DSS43 had been offline since March while NASA completed a series of hardware upgrades, but tested the new components by sending commands to the craft.
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However, due to the distance, the ground team had to wait more than 34 hours for a reply – but Voyager 2 received the commands and sent back a ‘hello.’
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DSS43 is located in Australia and is part of a collection of radio antennas around the world that combine to communicate with any spacecraft beyond the moon. … READ MORE MORE
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