[서울신문] NASA communicates with Voyager 2, who was’lost’ outside 18.8 billion km, after 11 months

Communication with the space probe’Voyager 2′, which flew 18.8 billion km away from the Earth like a’missing child’, resumed after 11 months.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 23rd (local time) that Voyager 2 was in charge of contacting the district control center with the completion of the work to improve the performance of a large 70m radio antenna at the base station in Canberra, Australia. NASA’s command transmission for the Voyager 2, which had been suspended since March last year, when antenna performance improvement began, is also possible again.

The survey data sent by the Voyager 2 could be received using three 34m-sized radio antennas while improving the antenna performance. However, this antenna did not have a transmission function, so it was not possible to send various commands to control the Voyager 2.

NASA said it had sent a test message to the Voyager 2 in October last year, when the performance improvement of the 70m antenna was in the final stage. It is designed to hibernate itself if it does not receive orders from the Earth for a long period of time, so a simple test message was sent to prevent this.

The Voyager 2, which continues its exploration activities without major problems, left Earth 15 days after the launch of the twin spacecraft Voyager 1 in August 1977. It has traveled in space for more than 43 years in search of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and has been exploring the farthest space as an aircraft made by mankind. It only takes 35 hours to communicate with Voyager 2. It takes 17 hours and 35 minutes for data sent from one side to reach the other.

After the Voyager 1 in 2018, it became the second artificial spacecraft that crossed into the interstellar space, and some functions of the Voyager 2 stopped working due to excess power consumption at the end of January last year. It took a day and a half from Earth to send a reboot order to do a kind of’cardiopulmonary resuscitation’. NASA predicts that the Voyager 2 will continue exploration in the next four to eight years.

Byung-seon Lim, Secretary General, Peace Research Institute [email protected]