About a week ago, operators of the Voyager 2 spacecraft sent a series of commands that inadvertently caused the distant probe to point its antenna slightly away from Earth. As a result, NASA has lost contact with the spacecraft, which is nearly half a century old and presently 19.9 billion km away from the planet.
For the time being, NASA and the mission’s scientists aren’t panicking. In an update posted Friday, the space agency said Voyager 2 is programmed to reset its orientation several times a year to keep its antenna pointing at Earth.
Can someone ELI5 then why it’s possible to make this mistake then? Like, why didn’t they make that possible for someone to adjust in the first place?
If the antenna isn’t pointed at us, it can’t hear the commands we send.
We do have to be able to tell it to point the antenna away from Earth sometimes… to point sensors at a target of interest or to align thrusters in a certain direction for a maneuver. We don’t need to do these things much anymore, but the ability was critical during planetary flybys.
If we point it away in purpose, we also tell it to point back at Earth when it finishes what it’s doing.
We don’t tell it to automatically reset the orientation more often because that would waste fuel. When it runs out of fuel, it has no way to maintain the antenna orientation and we loose contact forever.
Can someone ELI5 then why it’s possible to make this mistake then? Like, why didn’t they make that possible for someone to adjust in the first place?
If the antenna isn’t pointed at us, it can’t hear the commands we send.
We do have to be able to tell it to point the antenna away from Earth sometimes… to point sensors at a target of interest or to align thrusters in a certain direction for a maneuver. We don’t need to do these things much anymore, but the ability was critical during planetary flybys.
If we point it away in purpose, we also tell it to point back at Earth when it finishes what it’s doing.
We don’t tell it to automatically reset the orientation more often because that would waste fuel. When it runs out of fuel, it has no way to maintain the antenna orientation and we loose contact forever.