Space agency NASA said it received a “heartbeat” signal from the probe after it lost contact with the Voyager 2 probe billions of kilometers from Earth. NASA announced that a routine command sequence triggered a 2-degree change in Voyager 2’s antenna orientation, thus cutting off communication with Earth.Voyager 2’s heartbeat heard
After a command update sent to Voyager 2 last month by NASA, the antenna of the spacecraft, which has been exploring the universe since 1977, is positioned to face two degrees away from Earth. As a result, the probe stopped receiving commands or sending data. However, NASA said it has recently received a signal from Voyager 2. NASA said this news confirms that Voyager 2 is still broadcasting and is “healthy.”
Although full communication has not yet been established, Voyager 2’s antenna is programmed to reset many times each year so that it returns to Earth. The next reset will be on October 15. Until then, engineers will attempt to send a command to Voyager 2 to return to Earth.
Where is Voyager 2 now?
Voyager 2 is approximately 19.9 billion km from Earth, traveling through interstellar space at an estimated speed of 55,346 km/h and exploring unexplored deep space. Given that the spacecraft was almost 20 billion kilometers away, it took about 18 hours for the detected ‘heartbeats’ to reach us.
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