NASA’s Voyager 2 has lost communication with Earth due to an unintentional shift in its antenna direction. The next programmed orientation adjustment on October 15 is expected to restore communication, while Voyager 1 continues to operate as usual.

A series of scheduled commands directed at NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 led to an unintentional change in antenna direction. Consequently, the antenna moved 2 degrees off course from Earth, causing the spacecraft to lose its ability to receive commands or transmit data back to our planet.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    No, the level of precision that is required for this is quite literally unprecedented. You can try and dig at my post all you want, but it just seems like you have an axe to grind.

    • zalack@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Precision for what? Knowing their cron job will fire? Knowing what was wrong with the commands they sent? Neither of those are crazy precise or ambiguous statements?

      The only highly precise thing that needs to happen is the alignment of the antenna but that system has been working for decades already and has been thoroughly tested.

      NASA tends to be pretty straightforward when talking about risks, and if they feel like all the systems are in working order and there’s a good chance we’ll be back in contact with it, I think it’s worth talking them at their word.

      Like yeah, it’s impressive they can aim an antenna that precisely, but using stars to orient an object is a very very well understood geometry problem. NASA has been using that technique at least as far back as Apollo