Voyager 2 Is Truly All Alone Right Now

NASA's made a bit of a boo-boo. They recently sent a series of planned commands to Voyager 2, which is something they do from time to time. However, somewhere in those commands was apparently an order to rotate the craft by 2 degrees. That's not a lot, but when we're dealing with a spacecraft over 12 billion miles away, it's more than enough to completely cut communication with Voyager 2. Oops.

There is some good news. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed a bit later utilizing the Deep Space Network that Voyager 2 is still broadcasting. They didn't fully lose it; Voyager 2 is still alive. NASA engineers will attempt to contact the probe and get it to point back at Earth. But even if that doesn't work, all is not lost, as Voyager 2 is programmed to automatically point itself at Earth every few months. The next reorientation is scheduled for October 15. Contact should be resumed then.

In the end, this should represent a relatively harmless blip in Voyager 2's long life, but also, come on NASA, what are you doing? Voyager's been cruising for 46 years now and it's billions and billions of miles away? Don't get it upset now. Come on.

Voyager Probes Begin Their Long Goodbye

Voyagers 1 and 2 have lived a remarkable life. We're at 45 years now, 15 years longer than I've lived, and yet they're still out there, still reporting back to an increasingly distant Earth. And if NASA has its way, they will continue to do so for another 10 years. But the Voyagers were not made to live forever. Their plutonium power supply is losing potency at a rate of 4 watts a year, and so, to keep the probes going as long as possible, some of their instruments will be shut down. The power just cannot be spared. 

But while the Voyagers will eventually run out of power, let's not forget all the work they've done over their long lives. That's a long article, but very informative. I didn't know that the engineers essentially snuck one over on the government, utilizing slightly more expensive parts to make the probes much hardier. They were only supposed to last a few years, not 50. Just think what we would have missed out on if they hadn't bent the rules.

New Space Probe In The Works To Explore Beyond The Solar System

We have sent a total of four space probes beyond the confines of the solar system, with one more quickly approaching the edge. The Voyagers have given us a decent amount of good data about interstellar space, but they weren't designed for it, and it's the same story for New Horizons when it gets out that far. Those probes can only tell us so much. So now NASA has a new mission in the works, though it's still very early, to send a purpose-built space probe out to study interstellar space. The mission, which will hopefully launch in the mid 2030s and will last around 50 years, will involve the probe blasting out quickly (relatively speaking that is) to around 1,000 AU and examining the heliosphere, which is where the sun's influence ends. It's an ambitious mission, and I really hope it actually happens.