NASA establishes full contact with Voyager 2 probe months earlier than expected

Space agency NASA has been able to establish complete contact with Voyager 2 probe, which was lost a few days back, months before than expected.

The space agency had sent a wrong command to the spacecraft in July which changed its position and severed its contact. It was sent on an exploration of space in 1977.

On Tuesday, a signal was picked up, however, thanks to an "interstellar shout", which is a powerful instruction, its antenna was positioned back facing Earth.

Originally, NASA had pinned hopes on Voyager 2 probe resetting itself in October. The mission controllers took 37 hours to figure out if the interstellar command sent by them had worked since Voyager 2 was almost billions of miles away from Earth.

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Staff used the "highest-power transmitter" to send signals to the spacecraft and timed it to be sent during "the best conditions" so that the antenna gets positioned as per the command, said Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd to AFP.

After the probe lost the communications, it was not able to send back data to Nasa's Deep Space Network and receive commands. However, the space agency confirmed on August 4 that the data was received by the spacecraft and it was normally operating.

NASA has said that the spacecraft, which is laden with science instruments, should stay on its planned trajectory in the universe.

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The space agency on Monday (July 31) said that its huge dish in Canberra, the capital of Australia, was making efforts to detect any stray signals from Voyager 2. This happened when NASA was able to hear the first faint "heartbeat" signal.

The area of Voyager 2 was being bombarded by the antenna with the correct command, hoping to establish contact somehow, said NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which looks after the Voyager missions.

The probe has been programmed for resetting its position multiple times every year to ensure that its antenna is pointing at Earth. The next reset will take place on October 15, on which NASA was resting its hopes if all other attempts had failed.

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Voyager 2, along with its twin Voyager 1, are the only spacecraft which are operating outside the heliosphere, which is a protective bubble of magnetic fields and particles, generated by the Sun. They both went into interstellar space in 2018 and 2012, respectively.

The probes have been designed in a way that it can take advantage of a rare alignment of outer planets, which takes place every 176 years to explore Jupiter and Saturn.

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