123,000 Miles Away: A series of scheduled commands issued to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft
on July 21 resulted in an unintentional change in the antenna’s direction. As a result, NASA has lost communication with the Voyager 2 spacecraft. The spacecraft, which is currently more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) away from Earth, has consequently experienced a disruption in its communication with NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) ground antennas as a result of the antenna moving two degrees off course from Earth. This caused the spacecraft to lose its ability to receive commands or transmit data back to our planet. The misalignment prevents the spacecraft from receiving ground controller commands and sending data to the DSN.
In order to keep its antenna in line with Earth, Voyager 2 is programmed to change its orientation several times a year. The following planned change is set for October 15, which is expected to restore correspondence. In spite of the interference, the mission group anticipates that Explorer 2 should remain on its arranged direction all through this tranquil period.
Voyager 1, on the other hand, is operating normally despite being nearly 24 billion kilometers (15 billion miles) away from the planet.
Explorer 1 and Explorer 2 are twin space apparatus that were sent off by NASA in 1977 with the essential objective of investigating the external nearby planet group. In spite of being more than forty years old, they stay functional and keep on returning significant logical information.
Explorer 1 was sent off on September 5, 1977, and its main goal was to fly by Jupiter and Saturn. During its excursion, Explorer 1 gave definite pictures and information of these gas goliaths and their moons, including the disclosure of dynamic volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io and complex ring frameworks around Saturn. In 2012, Explorer 1 impacted the world forever by turning into the principal space apparatus to enter interstellar space, the district of room past our nearby planet group.
The only spacecraft to have passed by all four outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—is Voyager 2, which launched on August 20, 1977. It discovered Neptune’s Great Dark Spot and Uranus’ off-center magnetic field, two significant details about these planets and their moons.
