Voyager 2 sends 'hello' from 18.8 billion kilometers
Christian Fernsby ▼ | November 4, 2020
NASA has got back in contact with the Voyager 2 probe, which has been travelling through space since August 1977.Article continues below
NASA sent a series of commands to Voyager 2 via a huge radio antenna, which had been offline for repairs and upgrades since March.
Voyager 2 received the call and executed the commands, despite being more than 18.8 billion kilometers from Earth.
It is so far away that NASA had to wait nearly 35 hours for a reply.
"For the past 8 months, Deep Space Station 43 has been undergoing upgrades. NASA oyager 2 has been waiting for us to be able to send it commands once again.
On Friday 30th October, we sent those commands and after a 34hour 48 min round trip time, a "hello" came back!" said CanberraDSN.
Among the upgrades to the transmission dish, called DSS43 and located in Australia, are two new radio transmitters.
The transmitters have not been replaced in over 47 years, but it is expected that it will now come back online in February 2021.
Engineers also upgraded the heating and cooling, power supply equipment, and other electronics in order to make the transmitters work.
Since the dish went offline, NASA has been able to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but has not been able to send commands to it.
The repairs to the dish will have other benefits for future Mars missions.
It will be used for the Mars Perseverance mission, when the rover will land on the Red Planet in February 2021.
It will look for ancient alien fossils as well as launching the first helicopter flight on another planet. ■ What to read next
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