Update August 4: NASA's facility in Australia successfully reoriented Voyager 2, receiving science and telemetry data confirming the spacecraft's normal operation and expected trajectory. Update August 1: A faint signal from Voyager 2 has been detected by NASA's DSN, indicating the spacecraft is

NASA’s Voyager 2 has lost communication with Earth due to an unintentional shift in its antenna direction. The next programmed orientation adjustment on October 15 is expected to restore communication, while Voyager 1 continues to operate as usual.

A series of scheduled commands directed at NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 led to an unintentional change in antenna direction. Consequently, the antenna moved 2 degrees off course from Earth, causing the spacecraft to lose its ability to receive commands or transmit data back to our planet.

  • Parabola@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    As a software engineer I feel for the person who accidentally sent the wrong value and caused an icon to be offline, potentially forever.

    • EnderWi99in@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      It’s not going to be offline forever. It’ll reorient in a couple months. It was designed to do this when comms are lost. Still a little scary though.