CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after shedding contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away.
Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar area, Voyager 2 has been out of contact ever since flight controllers by chance despatched a unsuitable command greater than per week in the past that tilted its antenna away from Earth. The spacecraft’s antenna shifted a mere 2%, nevertheless it was sufficient to chop communications.
Though it’s thought of a protracted shot, NASA stated Monday that its enormous dish antenna in Canberra, Australia, is looking out for any stray alerts from Voyager 2, at present greater than 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) distant. It takes greater than 18 hours for a sign to succeed in Earth from so far-off.
Within the coming week, the Canberra antenna — a part of NASA’s Deep House Community — additionally will bombard Voyager 2’s neighborhood with the right command, in hopes it hits its mark, in keeping with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Voyager missions.
In any other case, NASA should wait till October for an computerized spacecraft reset that ought to restore communication, in keeping with officers.
Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 to discover the outer planets, only a couple weeks forward of its equivalent twin, Voyager 1.
Nonetheless in contact with Earth, Voyager 1 is now practically 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, making it humanity’s most distant spacecraft.
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