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.
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.
Mishap or...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Reads like someone did made a mistake somewhere...
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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?
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This scenario was an actual episode of The Big Bsng Theory.
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Yes, that was what made that comment funny. He knew that. Everyone on this site knows that. Because nerds. ;)
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> 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
Re: Mishap or...? (Score:2)
Are you widely optimistic or being sarcastic?
Re:Mishap or...? (Score:5, Informative)
> 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!"
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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?
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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.
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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.
AE-35 unit (Score:2)
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.
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V*ger was just sick of Earth telling it what to do all the time and wanted a little break.
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V*ger? I hardly know her!
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Feel free to name the other organization in history, public or private, that has probes operating in interstellar space.
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Feel free to name the other organization in history...
It actually astounds me to see people try and defend NASA. My personal direct interest with NASA, like many others, started with the shuttle. Like most everyone else at the time I had a complete love affair with NASA in the 80s over the shuttle and Voyager and all the rest. I resisted disillusionment with the revelations after Challenger. But then came:
-The Mars Climate Orbiter Crater.
-The Hubble mirror scandal
-Columbia.
-Curiosity
-SLS
-The Boeing StarLiner contract/development fiasco
Every one of those a com
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The failures you list only even mean anything by standards that NASA itself created by doing better in other cases, so in essence you're using its successes against it. Your criticisms sound for all the world like some sports fan critiquing a world-class MV
Unplanned (Score:5, Funny)
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' ...
Re:Unplanned (Score:5, Funny)
Unplanned, and didn't even move out of home until age 41.
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Could be Klingons (Score:3)
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.
Re: Could be Klingons (Score:2)
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For some reason, Klingons are attracted to Uranus.
changing the direction of the antenna (Score:2)
Didn't this happen in 2001 ?
My Yugo has this problem (Score:1)
Technical question: (Score:2)
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 ;-)
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Hint: The "calibration signal" Voyager aims for doesn't come from Earth.
Re:Technical question: (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: Technical question: (Score:2)
How does it find the sun though? And what happens if the pulleys and gears get rusty? (/1970s humor)
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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.
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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.
On course... (Score:3)
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...
Re:On course... (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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Then it reappears on the opposite side of the solar system.
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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.
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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!
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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
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Awesome!
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If it doesn't collide with an asteroid.
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First, they do "maneuver" it slightly to fix the orientation, and second it does have a planned trajectory.
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There are people who can screw up boiling water. It's not inconceivable that, despite the mountains of experience and checking and checking again, that something inadvertently didn't go as planned.
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Stupid shit happens. Humans are imperfect, we *will* screw up sometimes, despite all our best efforts. Which is why smart people not blinded by their own ego build in multiple redundancies - like automatically re-calibrating the antenna orientation periodically.
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Shit happens, mistakes happen. The simple solution is to stop doing anything. That way no mistakes can happen.
Re: I think it was planned. (Score:2)
Re: I think it was planned. (Score:1)
Re:I think it was planned. (Score:5, Informative)
The cameras have been switched off since 1989, and require far more power than is available now to operate. The cameras are Vidicon tubes that were designed to look at sunlit planets, and are not sensitive enough to make useful images of anything at 120 AU.
The remaining instruments are independent of Voyager's attitude.
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I wonder how far off the mark would ~2 degrees be from that distance. That's where you'll find the cloaked observational outpost that recieved the transmissions they were unwilling to beam down to Earth.
Can you hear me Major Tom? (Score:2)
The Voyager Team (Score:2)
It's really quite astounding the Voyager Team is still operational.
It's been an amazing 50 years. Rock on, folks.