NASA has finally managed to reestablish contact with the Voyager 2 spacecraft following two weeks of silence after flight controllers sent a wrong command to the spacecraft that titled its antenna away from earth.To reposition the antenna, NASA's Deep Space Network sent an "interstellar shout" on Wednesday with the help of NASA's most powerful radio antenna in Canberra, Australia.
It was a longshot attempt at sending instructions to right the craft that required perfect timing.
The command was timed to be sent during the best conditions during the antenna tracking pass in order to maximize possible receipt of the command by the spacecraft.
As Voyager 2 is more than 12 19 billion kilometers from earth, it took roughly 18.5 hours for the command traveling at light speed to reach the spacecraft, and another 18.5 hours to hear back.
Crews therefore had to wait more than a day to learn whether their intervention had even worked.
In the early hours of yesterday in the US, Voyager began returning science and telemetry data "indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory," the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
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