2023-08-04 20:55:00
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the American space agency, NASA, announced today that the Voyager 2 spacecraft has finally reestablished communication with Earth, following losing contact on July 21. A kind of “heartbeat” from the device was captured on the planet on August 1st, and now the signal has resumed, at 1:29 pm this Friday. At that moment, the spacecraft sent back scientific and telemetry data, indicating that it is operating normally and following the planned trajectory.
The probe had not communicated with NASA for two weeks, since, on July 21, the satellite’s antenna was accidentally tilted by regarding two degrees, which ended up cutting the signal, as a result of a series of maneuvers.
Voyager 2 data are received by the Deep Space Network, NASA’s DSN, through antennas located in the United States, Spain and Australia. This network also supports other distant missions in our Solar System.
It is worth remembering that this is not the first time that we have lost contact with the probe, which was launched in 1977 and today is 20 billion kilometers from the planet. Three years ago, NASA did not receive data from Voyager 2 for seven months due to a problem with the DSN radio telescope in Canberra, Australia. The radio transmitters had not been repaired to date since they were built some 50 years ago.
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