After a mysterious mistake, NASA managed to establish communication with the Voyager 2 probe


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The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977, have been in space for 42 years. Together, these robots have changed our understanding of the solar system and are now revealing unprecedented information about interstellar space outside the Sun's sphere of influence. On January 28 of this year, however, NASA reported problems with Voyager 2, the causes of which were not known. The device is currently 18.4 billion km from Earth. According to the Inverse publication, which included a link to NASA Voyager's official Twitter account, it was brought back into operation and the mission to collect scientific data about the solar system and the interstellar space behind it resumed.

Voyager robot machines are perhaps the greatest achievement of mankind.

What happened to Voyager 2?

On February 5, NASA announced on its Twitter account that the Voyager 2 device is not only stable, but is also returning to its scientific mission. At the moment, the connection between it and Earth is configured and working properly. Keep in mind that the device encountered a problem on January 28th and communication with it was interrupted for unknown reasons. Voyager 2 then turned off the power and software to automatically protect the spaceship. The probe had to be rotated 360 degrees the evening before to calibrate one of the instruments on board. However, the turnaround did not take place. As a result, two of his systems – both of which consume a lot of energy – worked simultaneously. The most likely problem, according to the researchers, is that the spaceship consumed too much power, which led to the triggering of the security software. The software automatically turns off Voyager 2's scientific instruments when an overload occurs to save energy.

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42 years spaceship plowed with gold plates on the hull space

At the time of writing, NASA has neither confirmed nor denied whether this actually happened. Only time will tell if we will ever get an answer to the question of what went wrong. But at the moment, we can all be sure that the Voyager 2 mission is far from over. If everything goes well, he will have five years to live, which means that for another five years the device will collect valuable scientific data from this area of ​​space that we cannot investigate in any other way.

This is interesting: where do the Voyager and Pioneer probes go and how long do they fly?

Both vehicles have now spent four decades in space, so their wear and tear is a matter of time. Even if we lose contact with these space travelers, they will continue to plow the room and carry gold plates on their board that contain information about our civilization.