NASA announced at the end of last week that a series of commands sent to Voyager 2 unintentionally caused it to redirect its antenna, rendering communication with the space probe, sent into space over 45 years ago, impossible.
Nevertheless, NASA states that Voyager 2’s original programming causes it to automatically realign its antenna towards Earth several times each year. The next time this is expected to happen is on October 15th. At that time, NASA’s Earth-based Deep Space Network (DSN) anticipates regaining contact with the spacecraft, which remains the second-farthest human-made object from Earth to date.
Voyager 1 and 2 were launched into space in 1977. Currently, Voyager 2 is approximately 19.9 billion kilometers away from Earth, while Voyager 1 has traveled approximately 24 billion kilometers away from our planet.
