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12.3 Billion Miles Away: NASA Has Lost Communication With Voyager 2 Spacecraft (scitechdaily.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Woland@lemm.ee to c/world@lemmy.world

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NASA’s Voyager 2 has lost communication with Earth due to an unintentional shift in its antenna direction. The next programmed orientation adjustment on October 15 is expected to restore communication, while Voyager 1 continues to operate as usual.

A series of scheduled commands directed at NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 led to an unintentional change in antenna direction. Consequently, the antenna moved 2 degrees off course from Earth, causing the spacecraft to lose its ability to receive commands or transmit data back to our planet.

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[-] Parabola@lemmy.world 162 points 1 year ago

As a software engineer I feel for the person who accidentally sent the wrong value and caused an icon to be offline, potentially forever.

[-] EnderWi99in@kbin.social 111 points 1 year ago

It's not going to be offline forever. It'll reorient in a couple months. It was designed to do this when comms are lost. Still a little scary though.

[-] foggy@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

[removed by mod]

[-] zalack@kbin.social 85 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is one of those things that sounds meaningful, but can be said about literally any problem in any system. Not all knowledge requires the same level of precision for confidence.

If the engineers at NASA who are familiar with the system say this is a known error state that will be fixed the next time the system designed to correct it fires on its set schedule, there's not a whole lot added by saying sure, but what if they're wrong?

It's just restating the table stakes of existence.

[-] glimse@lemmy.world 60 points 1 year ago

But what if I, armchair scientist on Lemmy, sees a flaw in the plan of some of the greatest engineers in the world? Doesn't the world deserve to know what I think about the communications system I just became aware of today?

[-] zalack@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lol. The knee-jerk contrarianism online really gets under my skin, especially when it's towards experts.

Like yeah, sometimes experts are wrong or systems don't behave as expected. But framing that as some sort of erudite insight really bugs me.

"I hope the recovery system works!" doesn't need to be rewritten as "Mmm yes. But what these engineers haven't considered is the possibility that they are wrong".

[-] glimse@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I had a laugh at this line:

It's just restating the table stakes of existence.

Brilliantly put. It's like saying to a stranger on an airplane, "If these pilots don't know how to fly, we are gonna die!"

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[-] Resistentialism@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

I don't think I'm prepared to lose another space robot.

[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

You're right, internet stranger. I bet they have not considered the possibility that Voyager 2 might have been eaten by a space whale. Like why aren't the lame-stream fake news channels even discussing the space whale theory. Voyager 2 might even be intact inside the belly of the beast, and if NASA engineers haven't factored this new data into their calculations about how fast a space whale would float through space with the additional mass and inertia of a functional probe, the signal could be lost forever.

I challenge Neil Degrass Tyson to a debate about space whales and how much they would theoretically be able to swallow whole.

[-] whatisallthis@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

rm -rf /telemetry-data

[-] 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

rm really predates the start of voyager 2.

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[-] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

They're going to have a very tough time sleeping between now and mid-October.

[-] faethon@lemmy.world 67 points 1 year ago

Unmonitored, it will slowly evolve into V'ger now!

[-] Holodeck_Moriarty@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Sometime between now and 2271!

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[-] Candelestine@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago

There's actually a group of alien teenagers following it and occasionally giving it a spin or nudge, just to fuck with us. They think its hilarious.

[-] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Fucking Neutrinos.

[-] EnderWi99in@kbin.social 36 points 1 year ago

It'll reconnect and align back the next time it pings back to Earth. It was designed for this kind of contingency. It's very unlikely its lost forever.

[-] Yepthatsme@kbin.social 21 points 1 year ago

What a great project. Really puts perspective on what can be accomplished with public funds and vision. Meanwhile shit like Starlink exists and lasts maybe a couple of years. I wonder whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???

[-] Thadrax@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago

As much as I’d like to agree, those projects have very different goals and constraints.

[-] bassomitron@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

As much as I hate Musk and most of his idiot projects, Starlink isn't that bad of an idea. Traditional SATCOM internet is more expensive for shittier service. From what I've read, Starlink has been fairly reliable, not overly expensive, and performance is pretty solid. Sure, in areas that already have "excellent" terrestrial internet providers available, it is pretty useless. But for rural areas, it's a godsend.

[-] cmbabul@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

It’s 100% a good idea, it just shouldn’t be privately owned

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

But private companies can do things public companies can't do!^1^

Because private companies don't have the GOP actively sabotaging them whenever they are in power so that they can argue that private companies work better than public ones.^2^
Unless your private company supports groups that the GOP hates.

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[-] astral_avocado@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

Because they're low orbit communication satellites that require a lot of fuel to maintain said orbit, and are designed to deorbit pretty quickly so as to not pollute LEO with junk?

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[-] Astrealix@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Wonder if we could ping it off one of the other satellites we have around other planets to get a message out to it. Fingers crossed it's back in contact by October and we don't have to try weird shit though

[-] helpimnotdrowning@lemmy.sdf.org 19 points 1 year ago

I would imagine 2° at 12 billion miles means it's almost certainly not pointing at anything man-made anymore, but I'm also not an astrophysicist so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Being that far out I don't even think we could go out and fix it anymore

[-] Butters@lemmywinks.com 18 points 1 year ago

Lol no we most certainly cannot go out and fix it.

[-] EnmaAi22@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

yet

But by the time we could there would be zero reason to anyway

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[-] Johnny5@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And even if it was pointed at random human equipment it’s so far away that you need a very special radio and antenna; not just any old satellite is necessarily going to do the trick. I think the signal strength is around -196db iirc so incredibly faint, and The antennas they use to communicate with voyager are massive.

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[-] MrTulip@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago

If I read it correctly, the probe checks periodically, and if it loses contact, it uses the location of known stars to point its antenna back towards the Earth. If that doesn't work, it's gone.

[-] RFBurns@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Communication wasn't "lost", it was thrown away through malpractice.

[-] zepheriths@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

What? My guy it temporary. In a couple of months it will reorient itself automatically

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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023

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