NASA back in touch with Voyager 2 after losing contact from erroneous command sent!

August 2, 2023
After days of silence, NASA has finally reestablished contact with Voyager 2, the 46-year-old spacecraft situated billions of miles away in interstellar space. The communication had been severed due to an accidental wrong command sent nearly two weeks ago, which caused the antenna to tilt away from Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network, a network of giant radio antennas around the world, picked up a reassuring "heartbeat signal," indicating that the spacecraft is operational.
The news has uplifted the spirits of the project team, led by project manager Suzanne Dodd. They are now planning to attempt turning Voyager 2's antenna back toward Earth. However, there is some skepticism among flight controllers, who doubt that this command will be successful. If the maneuver doesn't work, they'll have to wait until October for an automatic spacecraft reset. The misalignment of the antenna is only a minor 2 percent.
Understandably, waiting until October is far from ideal, so the team will make several attempts to send commands before that time to restore proper communication with Voyager 2.
Launched in 1977 alongside its identical twin Voyager 1, Voyager 2 was set on a remarkable mission to explore the outer planets. Although Voyager 1 currently holds the record as the most distant spacecraft, still communicating and functioning smoothly at 15 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 2 follows closely in interstellar space, located over 12 billion miles away from our planet. At this vast distance, signals take more than 18 hours to travel one way, making communication with the spacecraft a complex and time-consuming endeavor.
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