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12.3 Billion Miles Away: NASA Has Lost Communication With Voyager 2 Spacecraft

https://lemm.ee/post/2678808

12.3 Billion Miles Away: NASA Has Lost Communication With Voyager 2 Spacecraft - lemm.ee

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.

Aug 1, 2023 at 12:13pmWeb
Show threadCandelestineAug 1, 2023
There’s actually a group of alien teenagers following it and occasionally giving it a spin or nudge, just to fuck with us. They think its hilarious.
Show threadWhiskyTangoFoxtrotAug 1, 2023
Fucking Neutrinos.
Show threadAstrealixAug 1, 2023
Wonder if we could ping it off one of the other satellites we have around other planets to get a message out to it. Fingers crossed it’s back in contact by October and we don’t have to try weird shit though
Show threadhelpimnotdrowningAug 1, 2023

I would imagine 2° at 12 billion miles means it’s almost certainly not pointing at anything man-made anymore, but I’m also not an astrophysicist so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Being that far out I don’t even think we could go out and fix it anymore

Show threadButtersAug 1, 2023
Lol no we most certainly cannot go out and fix it.
Show threadEnma AiAug 1, 2023

yet

But by the time we could there would be zero reason to anyway

Show threadGorkAug 2, 2023
I could see some far-future humans intercepting the Voyagers, catching them, and putting them in a museum somewhere.
Show threadAstrealixAug 1, 2023
Oh absolutely not. I’m just wondering if we could get stupidly lucky XD maybe it happens to be pointing at Voyager 1 (honestly idk how the trigonometry works out but maybe New Horizons?? Lol)
Show threadGradually_AdjustingAug 1, 2023

We’re talking about the most proverbially gone shit in human history. Not only is it too far away, it is going faster than any man-made object has ever gone.

…And we once launched a massive metal disc out of a giant bore hole with a nuclear explosion.

Edit: actually Operation Plumbbob sent the steel bore cap nearly 4x as fast as Voyager. Suck it, nerds.

Show threadQuinceDaPenceAug 1, 2023

The fastest man-made object would be the NASA Parker Solar Probe spacecraft which reached a speed of 535,000 kilometers per hour...0.05% of the speed of light

Show threadGradually_AdjustingAug 1, 2023
Holy shit, that’s significantly faster than a steel plate that was launched by a nuke and subsequently vaporized. Insane. Thank you
Show threadThadraxAug 1, 2023
I’d guess even if some other man made satellite is perfectly in line, those wouldn’t have even close to the necessary transmission power to reach voyager.
Show threadTheAndrewBrownAug 1, 2023
A shift of 2° at 12.3 billion miles means it’s now pointing about 430 million miles away from the earth. The likelihood that it would be pointing at one of the small handful of man made objects that are out that far is infinitesimally small. Imagine being in a filed 100 miles wide and spinning a bottle with a laser pointer on it and hoping it lands pointing at a single bottle cap at the edge of the field. That would be magnitudes more likely than this pointing at one of our objects. And even if it did, those also would have antennas pointed at Earth so they couldn’t receive the message without turning which might cause the same issue for them.
Show threadJohnny5Aug 1, 2023
And even if it was pointed at random nasa equipment it’s so far away that you need a very special radio and antenna; not just any old satellite is necessarily going to do the trick. I think the signal strength is around -196db iirc so incredibly faint, and The antennas they use to communicate with voyager are massive.
Show threadHalosheepAug 1, 2023
A 2° angle from 12 billion miles away would mean it’s pointing about 12 billion miles (rounded to nearest billion because why not) away from the Earth in whatever axis it is off by.
Show threadMrTulipAug 1, 2023
If I read it correctly, the probe checks periodically, and if it loses contact, it uses the location of known stars to point its antenna back towards the Earth. If that doesn’t work, it’s gone.
Show threadFrisbeedudeAug 1, 2023

12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers)

Show threadhiggsAug 1, 2023
Hero
Show threadTony SmehrikAug 1, 2023
How many football fields is that? I’ll also accept the distance in bananas.
Show threadFrisbeedudeAug 1, 2023
tree fiddy…billion…maybe
Show threadCyanococcusAug 1, 2023
~181,400,000,000 American football fields
~97,930,000,000,000 bananas (assuming 8 inch bananas)
Show threadosarusanAug 1, 2023

assuming 8 inch

My, we are feeling bold aren't we?

Show threadcoleAug 1, 2023
it’s a warm day!
Show threadbobs_monkeyAug 2, 2023
You’ve definitely done the TMI calculation, and surely corrected for yaw
Show threadFlowVoidAug 1, 2023
For those using the metric system, that’s 97930 gigabananas.
Show threadFushuan [he/him]Aug 1, 2023
You mean 9793e10 bananas?
Show threadBuddahrifficAug 1, 2023
97.9 TB(anana)
Show threadFlowVoidAug 1, 2023
For those using imperial units, that’s 1 bananalamadingdong.
Show threadheeplrAug 1, 2023
100.0 TiB(anana)
Show threadArbitraryValueAug 2, 2023
The weird thing to me is that that’s only about 23 football fields per person on earth. In other words, if each of us walks a mile and a half, all together we will have moved further than Voyager 2.
Show threadPersnickityPenguinAug 2, 2023
Doesn’t the average person like walk a mile and a half everyday? That’s around 4,000 steps which apparently I do without even knowing about it.
Show threadlittlecoltAug 2, 2023
Doing my part to lower the average!
Show threadClassyAug 2, 2023
Once you reach the billions, I don’t imagine miles or kilometers make much of a difference anyway. It isn’t like it helps visualize anything any better, does it?
Show threadfaethonAug 1, 2023
Unmonitored, it will slowly evolve into V’ger now!
Show threadHolodeck_MoriartyAug 1, 2023
Sometime between now and 2271!
Show thread1847953620Aug 1, 2023
That’s too far into the future, maybe 2271
Show threadNineMileTowerAug 1, 2023
At 38,000mph, it will be approximately 80 billion miles away from Earth. That’s .013 light years from Earth. Future generations may pass it by while staring out the window and laugh at how archaic our technology was.
Show threadRedditiscancer789Aug 1, 2023
No may, they will definitely laugh at most of it. “What do you mean they had to use their eyes to watch videos? It wasn’t just beamed directly into their head?”
Show threadbownt1Aug 1, 2023
It will get lonely and come back to find the creator. they always do.
Show threadGlitzyArmrestAug 1, 2023
🥲
Show threadchristophskiAug 2, 2023
V’GINY
Show threadlittlecoltAug 2, 2023
Mmmm… V’gussy…
Show threadParabolaAug 1, 2023
As a software engineer I feel for the person who accidentally sent the wrong value and caused an icon to be offline, potentially forever.
Show threadwhatisallthisAug 1, 2023
rm -rf /telemetry-data
Show thread5714Aug 1, 2023
rm really predates the start of voyager 2.
Show threadafraid_of_zombiesAug 2, 2023
That can’t be right. Is it?
Show threadArbitraryValueAug 2, 2023

rm: 1971

Voyager 2: 1977

rm (Unix) - Wikipedia

Show threadEnderWi99inAug 1, 2023
It's not going to be offline forever. It'll reorient in a couple months. It was designed to do this when comms are lost. Still a little scary though.
Show threadfoggyAug 1, 2023

This assumes their understanding of what caused the problem is accurate.

Should it be ever so slightly imprecise, it could mean we lose contact forever.

Show threadzalackAug 1, 2023

This is one of those things that sounds meaningful, but can be said about literally any problem in any system, and not all knowledge requires precision. If the engineers at NASA who know the system say this is a known error state that will be fixed the next time the system designed to correct it is scheduled to fire, there's not a whole lot added by saying sure, but what if they're wrong?

It's just stating the table stakes of existence.

Show threadglimseAug 1, 2023
But what if I, armchair scientist on Lemmy, sees a flaw in the plan of some of the greatest engineers in the world? Doesn’t the world deserve to know what I think about the communications system I just became aware of today?
Show threadzalackAug 1, 2023

Lol. The knee-jerk contrarianism online really gets under my skin, especially when it's towards experts.

Like yeah, sometimes experts are wrong or systems don't behave as expected. But framing that as some sort of erudite insight really bugs me.

"I hope it works out there way!" doesn't need to be rewritten as "Mmm yes. But what these engineers haven't considered is the possibility that they are wrong".

Show threadglimseAug 1, 2023

I had a laugh at this line:

It’s just restating the table stakes of existence.

Brilliantly put. It’s like saying to a stranger on an airplane, “If these pilots don’t know how to fly, we are gonna die!”

Show threadCorkyskogAug 2, 2023
Plot twist… he is the lead engineer on the team.
Show threadAurenkinAug 2, 2023

No but the experts could be right or wrong. Two possibilities so that means there’s a 50/50 chance.

/s

Show threadDanTilDawnAug 2, 2023
That all depends - how many joints did you smoke before outsmarting the engineers? 🧐
Show threadButt PirateAug 2, 2023
3
Show threadRestaldtAug 2, 2023
I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints and then I smoke two more
Show threadfoggyAug 1, 2023
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.
Show threadzalackAug 1, 2023

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.