NASA engineers, once again, picked up on the Voyager 2’s heartbeat signal. After ten long days of silence, NASA is optimistic they can reestablish contact with the spacecraft in interstellar space billions of miles from the Earth.
The flight controllers working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California operate the spacecraft. When they sent a wrong command, the 1970s-style spacecraft reacted by turning its antenna away from Earth. The antenna is only 2% off-kilter. And it severed contact on July 21.
“A series of planned commands sent to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft July 21 inadvertently caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth,” NASA officials said in a July 28 statement. “As a result, Voyager 2 is currently unable to receive commands or transmit data back to Earth.”
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Heartbeat signal
NASA has a global Deep Space Network of giant radio antennas. The network picked up a “heartbeat signal,” meaning the 46-year-old craft is “alive and operating,” according to project manager Suzanne Dodd’s email Tuesday.
