NASA Mistakenly Severs Communication to Voyager 2
upstart writes:
Thankfully the probe regularly phones home to fix this sort of mess:
NASA revealed on Friday that its venerable Voyager 2 probe is currently incommunicado, because the space agency pointed its antenna in the wrong direction.
By the time the news was released, the antenna on the spacecraft had been pointing two degrees away from the Earth for over a week.
This left it without the ability to receive commands or transmit data to antennae operated by the Deep Space Network (DSN).
NASA reckons the situation is temporary and will not end the probe's nearly 46-year stint in space as it is programmed to recalibrate its position a few times a year. October 15 is the next scheduled reset.
[...] But while old cars can be lovingly worked on by hand in real time, the Voyagers are over 20 light hours from Earth, and communication crawls along at a tedious 160 bits per second.
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