Hello again, Voyager 2! NASA makes the first request to investigate into intercellular space since March

For the first time in more than seven months, NASA praised its Voyager 2 probe in intercellular space.

Weiser 2 handlers on Thursday (October 29) showed a set of probe commands to the spacecraft using the Deep Space Station 43 (DSS 43) radio antenna in Canberra, Australia. Travel 2 NASA officials said in an update on Monday (November 2) that it has confirmed that it has recorded the instructions and executed them without incident.

The commands were first delivered by NASA to Voyager 2 after mid-March, when the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) DSS was launched. 43 Fly offline for repairs and upgrades. This ongoing maintenance work is extensive, involving, among other things, the addition of two new radio transmitters, one of which is used to communicate with Voyager 2.

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NASA officials said that particular transmitter had not been replaced in more than 47 years.

“What makes this work unique is that we’re working on all levels of the antenna, from the ground floor to the feedcones in the center of the bowl that extend over the rim,” said Brad Arnold. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California Said in Monday’s update.

“This test communication with Voyager 2 definitely tells us that things are on track with the work we are doing,” said Arnold, NASA’s project manager. Deep Space Network (DSN)

The work, which will benefit a wide range of NASA spacecraft communications, is scheduled to be rolled out in February 2021, agency officials said.

DSN is a network of three different, broadly identical locales – radio recipes in Canberra; Madrid, Spain; And Goldstone, California – which NASA uses to communicate with its distant spacecraft. The Canberra site includes three small dishes that together can receive relays from spacecraft, so the Voyager 2 team has been able to place tabs on the remote probe while the DSS 43 task prevented them from sending commands. Stopped.

And Voyager 2 can’t be heard using DSN gear in Spain and California: the spacecraft is moving lower than the Earth’s rabbit spacecraft and can only reach from the Southern Hemisphere.

Voyager 2 and its twins, Visor 1, Launched a few weeks apart in 1977 to launch an epic “Grand Tour” of the giant planets of the solar system. Two investigations accomplished this unprecedented task; Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn, and Voyager 2 competed closely with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. (Neptune’s Flyby, which includes a close-up view of the planet’s largest moon, Triton, sent Weisser to the “south.”

And then the Voyagers kept flying. Voyager entered intercellular space on August 1, 2012, becoming the first man-made object to do so. Travel 2 Prosecuted in late 2018.

Both spacecraft are still in full swing, with scientists conducting their first experiments on a uniform wire, extending a vast expanse of space beyond the Sun’s sphere of influence. Nuclear-powered visors are running low on juice, however, so mission team members have turned off many devices over the past few years to maximize their working life. Both spacecraft must have enough power to hold Data collection by 2024, Said members of the mission team.

Voyager 1 is currently about 14.1 billion miles (22.7 billion kilometers) from Earth, and Voyager 2 is 11.7 billion miles (18.8 billion kilometers) away from us. This is why Vizier 1 and. Takes command of 21 hours to go to About 17.5 hours To reach Visor 2.

Mike Wall “is the authorOut there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; featured by Carl Tate), a book about exploring alien life. Follow him on Twitter @Michaldwall. Follow us on Twitter.