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NASA

NASA's Voyager 2 Is Experiencing an Unplanned 'Communications Pause' (gizmodo.com) 60

A routine sequence of commands has triggered a 2-degree change in Voyager 2's antenna orientation, preventing the iconic spacecraft from receiving commands or transmitting data back to Earth, NASA announced earlier today. Mission controllers transmitted the commands to Voyager 2 on July 21. Gizmodo reports: Voyager 2, one of two twin probes launched in the 1970s to explore planets in the outer solar system, is located some 12.4 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth and is continually moving deeper into interstellar space. The glitch has disrupted the probe's ability to communicate with ground antennas operated by the Deep Space Network (DSN), and it's unable to receive commands from the mission team on Earth, NASA explained.

The communications pause is expected to be just that -- a pause. Voyager 2 is "programmed to reset its orientation multiple times each year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth," the space agency says. This procedure should -- fingers crossed -- re-establish the lost connection and allow routine communications to resume. The next reset is scheduled for October 15, which is 79 days from now. Undoubtedly, this will be 79 agonizing days for NASA and the Voyager team. Despite the current communication hiatus, the mission team remains confident that Voyager 2 will stay on its planned trajectory. Voyager 1, situated nearly 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth, "continues to operate normally," NASA added.

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NASA's Voyager 2 Is Experiencing an Unplanned 'Communications Pause'

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  • Mishap or...? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Don'tJoin ( 6185656 ) on Saturday July 29, 2023 @02:15AM (#63723432)

    Reads like someone did made a mistake somewhere...

    • Yeah .. that's what it sounds like, unless there's a method other than checking the uploaded code from which they can determine it got aimed 2 degrees off?

    • Some lonely tech was trying to impress a lady, hey pretty lady wanna drive a spaceship?
    • > Reads like someone did made a mistake somewhere...

      Check out this PR BS:

      "A routine sequence of commands has triggered a 2-degree change in Voyager 2â(TM)s antenna orientation,"

      No it didn't. Stop lying to us. Breaking communications for four months wasn't planned or routine. You don't know it's two degrees because you're looking at it with Hubble.

      At this point we're so used to anybody government doing nothing but lying to us at every turn that they think nothing of it.

      How about "a simple calculat

      • Our processes have been improved to prevent such errors from being transmitted in the future

        Are you widely optimistic or being sarcastic?

      • Re:Mishap or...? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Saturday July 29, 2023 @07:49AM (#63723730)

        > Reads like someone did made a mistake somewhere...

        Check out this PR BS:

        "A routine sequence of commands has triggered a 2-degree change in Voyager 2â(TM)s antenna orientation,"

        No it didn't. Stop lying to us. Breaking communications for four months wasn't planned or routine.

        Whoa, Bill. Relax a bit. Let's do some tequila shots and watch the world and laugh.

        Gizmodo is not NASA or the guvmint. What you are thinking are lies and concealment by NASA is a bit of hype by George Devorsky, writing for Gizmodo. It isn't NASA PR BS.

        The article by Denise Hill for NASA in the second link notes "A series of planned commands sent to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 inadvertently caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth. As a result, Voyager 2 is currently unable to receive commands or transmit data back to Earth."

        A not so subtle difference between a simple statement, and a clickbait article source.

        Commands are sent back and forth as part of mission maintenance, as planned. Now was it a mistake? My guess is yeah. Mistakes happen. But there is no info that NASA released that isn't very straightforward, they probably won't say anything like "That Dumbass Bob sent our takeout order to Voyager instead of the Sunny Grill yesterday, and got things messed up". But it should be fixed by the space probe in a month or so. Meanwhile we threw Bob off the roof of the assembly building, so that problem is fixed!"

        • Meanwhile we threw Bob off the roof of the assembly building, so that problem is fixed!"

          How long would it take to fall from the roof of the VAB, anyhow? Is that enough time for a human to hit terminal velocity?

          • Meanwhile we threw Bob off the roof of the assembly building, so that problem is fixed!"

            How long would it take to fall from the roof of the VAB, anyhow? Is that enough time for a human to hit terminal velocity?

            I like that question! Let's assume Bob is around 220 pounds, and normal height.

            The VAB is 160 meters or 526 feet tall. A human takes about 450 meters or 1500 feet to reach terminal velocity, so Bob wouldn't have hit it.

            So a 100 kg or 220 lb Bob would hit after about 5.7 seconds at 202 kph or 126 mph.

            • Excellent! Thank you for that answer. So Bob will have just enough time to reflect on his transgressions, but not so much time that the peril he's experiencing would be inhumane in length.

    • The onboard computer had warned about an imminent failure of the AE-35 unit pointing the antenna, but the computer on the ground didn't agree. Go figure.

    • Looks more like they had a fierce discussion without an outcome.
    • V*ger was just sick of Earth telling it what to do all the time and wanted a little break.

  • Unplanned (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday July 29, 2023 @02:20AM (#63723438)

    As Voyager 2, launched in 1977, had an original life expectancy of about 5 years and we're now at "45 years, 11 months, 7 days" (according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]) I'd say *everything* it does is "unplanned". Just sayin' ...

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday July 29, 2023 @02:27AM (#63723442)

    Check for Klingons in the vicinity. I saw it in a documentary how they blew up Pioneer 10. They don't seem to like our probes and could be out for Voyager now. I think it's something about preventing it from acquiring an alien LLM and becoming sentient.

  • Didn't this happen in 2001 ?

  • Drives into garage forward, all is good. Nite-nite. Next morning, ready to go to work, crap reverse never worked on this car.
  • How does it reorient itself? Does NASA send a calibration signal for Voyager to look for and the antenna is positioned for max power received for that signal?

    I'm guessing with the 70s era computer it's not plate solving against a picture of the stars and calculating where the earth is at any given moment. And GPS satellites aren't pointed the right way ;-)

    • Hint: The "calibration signal" Voyager aims for doesn't come from Earth.

    • by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Saturday July 29, 2023 @06:11AM (#63723612)

      Voyager has a simple star tracker: one sensor looks for the Sun, the other looks for Canopus. That gives enough attitude data to aim the antenna at Earth.
      Heck, the sun sensor alone is enough at this point. Find the sun, point the dish at it, and Earth will be within the line of sight of the antenna. The beam width of the antenna (0.5Â) is large enough that at this distance most of Earth's orbit is within the beam width.

      • How does it find the sun though? And what happens if the pulleys and gears get rusty? (/1970s humor)

      • Probably hard picking out any signal from Earth if the antenna is pointed straight at the giant radio transmitter that is the sun. I suspect they make use of the antenna's angular receiving sensitivity falloff to help reduce the noise received from the sun compared to Earth's signal.

        • Yes, you're right. I think that's where the error comes in, because that angle changes depending on where you are; they'd have started out with a much larger angle early in the mission. So this is something that would be set in a command upload.

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Saturday July 29, 2023 @03:34AM (#63723490) Homepage

    remains confident that Voyager 2 will stay on its planned trajectory

    I had to laugh at that. Voyager 2 is just drifting into interstellar space. It's not maneuvering...

    • by NoWayNoShapeNoForm ( 7060585 ) on Saturday July 29, 2023 @06:08AM (#63723608)

      remains confident that Voyager 2 will stay on its planned trajectory

      I had to laugh at that. Voyager 2 is just drifting into interstellar space. It's not maneuvering...

      Until it hits the edge of the movie set and pokes a hole in it?

      • Then it reappears on the opposite side of the solar system.

        • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          No, no, then we see that H.M.S. Pinafore is playing in the next theatre over. It reenters from the balcony on a zip line wearing an 1850s British police captain costume, then captures the Pirate King, who yields in Queen Victoria's name before being told that we have King Charles now. Everyone sings and dances, and then it leaves again on a path bound for Alpha Centauri.

          • NASA tech #1: We've reestablished communication with Voyager 2! Starting to download data now, I'm sending a copy to your computer now.

            NASA supervisor: Well that's odd... what the heck are we hearing?

            NASA tech #2: Sounds like Gilbert & Sullivan, sir!

            • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

              I am the very model of a modern spacebound NASA probe.
              I've information telling of the heliopause's outer lobe
              I've skimmed both Jupiter and Saturn's rings and Neptune's frozen mess,
              And when I passed Uranus, I discovered it's the smelliest.

              I'm very well acquainted, too, with solar winds and gravity,
              and on my golden record, carry most of Earth's depravity,
              but Sagan's nudie pictures both were censored; now we have regrets
              that aliens all think that humans all look like our silhouettes.

              Of my extrasolar tra

        • If it doesn't collide with an asteroid.

    • First, they do "maneuver" it slightly to fix the orientation, and second it does have a planned trajectory.

  • can you Here am I floating in a tin can..
  • It's really quite astounding the Voyager Team is still operational.
    It's been an amazing 50 years. Rock on, folks.

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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