NASA brings Voyager 2 fully back online, 11.5 billion miles from Earth
NASA BRINGS VOYAGER 2 FULLY BACK ONLINE, 11.5 BILLION MILES FROM EARTH
"Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."
IN AN INCREDIBLE FEAT of remote engineering, NASA has fixed one of the most intrepid explorers in human history.
Voyager 2, currently some
11.5 billion miles from Earth, is back online and resuming its mission to collect scientific data on the solar system and the interstellar space beyond.
VOYAGER 2 GLITCHED 11.5 BILLION MILES FROM EARTH — HERE'S HOW NASA IS TRYING TO FIX IT
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On Wednesday, February 5 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern,
NASA's Voyager Twitter account gave out the good news:
Voyager 2 is not only stable, but is back at its critical science mission.
"My twin is back to taking science data, and the team at @NASAJPL is evaluating the health of the instruments after their brief shutoff," the account tweeted.
Voyager 2 is sister craft to
Voyager 1. Both have been traveling through the solar system — and now beyond it — for the last four decades. Together, they have
transformed our understanding of our stellar neighborhood and are already revealing unprecedented information about the
interstellar space beyond the Sun's sphere of influence.
Good vibes! Voyager 2 continues to be stable, and communications between Earth and the spacecraft are fine.
My twin is back to taking science data, and the team at
@NASAJPL is evaluating the health of the instruments following their brief shutoff.
http://go.nasa.gov/3bjo76S
In
a statement, NASA confirmed that
Voyager 2 is back in business.
"Mission operators report that Voyager 2 continues to be stable and that communications between the Earth and the spacecraft are good."
"The spacecraft has resumed taking science data, and the science teams are now evaluating the health of the instruments," the agency said.
The fix is no mean feat: It takes 17 hours one-way to
communicate with Voyager 2 from Earth, which is the furthest away manmade object in space. That means a single information relay takes
34 hours.
WHAT HAPPENED TO VOYAGER 2?
The spacecraft had run into trouble on January 28, when NASA revealed that it had unexpectedly — and for unknown reasons — shut down. The world held its breath.
Here's the skinny: My twin went to do a roll to calibrate the onboard magnetometer, overdrew power and tripped software designed to automatically protect the spacecraft.
Voyager 2's power state is good and instruments are back on. Resuming science soon.
http://go.nasa.gov/38O37mC
https://twitter.com/NASAVoyager/status/1222327419140542464
As
Inverse reported at the time,
Voyager 2 went black right before it was scheduled for a maneuver in which the spacecraft rotates 360 degrees in order to calibrate one of its instruments onboard.
But the spacecraft didn't make the move. As a result, two of its systems — both of which consume a lot of power — were running at the same time, according to
a statement by NASA.
The likeliest problem was that the spacecraft was using up too much of its available power supply, which triggered protection software. The software automatically turns off
Voyager 2’s science instruments when there is a power overload to save on power. It only has a finite supply, after all.
As of writing, NASA hasn't confirmed or denied whether that is what actually happened. Only time will tell whether the agency ever gets an answer to what went wrong. But for now, we can all rest assured that
Voyager 2's mission is far from over yet. If all goes well, it should have another five years of life left, meaning five more years of data collection from an area of space we humans have no other way of studying.
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1.31.2020 1:03 PM