After repairing radio antennas in Australia, NASA has re-established contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft as it traveled more than 1.6 billion miles from Earth.

Mission operators sent a series of commands to the 43-year-old probe using ground-based Deep Space Station 43 (DSS 43) antennas, which established a signal to confirm the ‘call’ was received.

DSS has been offline since March 43 when NASA completed multiple hardware upgrades, but tested new components by sending commands to Kraft.

However, due to the distance, the ground team had to wait more than 34 hours for an answer – but Voyager received 2 commands and sent back a ‘hello’.

DSS 43 is based in Australia and is part of a worldwide collection of radio antennas that come together to communicate with any spacecraft beyond the moon.

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The mission operators sent a series of commands to the 43-year-old probe using Deep Space Station 43 (DSS 43) (Figure), which established a signal to confirm the ‘call’ was received.

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DSS has been offline since March 43 when NASA completed multiple hardware upgrades, but tested new components by sending commands to Voyager 2 (Figure)

The Australian satellite dish is one of three other members of the Deep Space Network (DSN) – the other two include Goldstone, California and Madrid in Spain.

The successful call suggests that DSS 43 will be fully online back in February 2021.

Brad Arnold, DSN project director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California, said: ‘What makes this work unique is that we’re working on all levels of the antenna, from full-level columns all the way to the center of the doing dish with feedcons extending over the rim. Is ”

Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 and reached interstellar space just two years ago

“This experimental interaction with Voyager 2 must tell us that things are on track with the work we are doing.”

In 1989, the spacecraft flew to the North Pole of Neptune because it created a nearby flyby, which pushed it south – and it has been moving in that direction ever since.

Now about 11.6 billion miles from Earth, the spacecraft is so far south that it has no line of sight with a radio antenna in the northern hemisphere.

DSS43 is the only technology on our planet that can reach such a distance on behalf of a transmitter and it is now receiving information from space science in the middle of a search.

In 1989, the spacecraft flew to the North Pole of Neptune because it created a nearby flyby, which pushed it south – and it has been moving in that direction ever since. Now 11.6 billion miles from Earth, the spacecraft is so far south that it has no line of sight with a radio antenna in the Northern Hemisphere.

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The huge 111-foot-wide dish has been in operation since 1972, five years before Voyager 2 was launched into space and has received its ‘most significant transformation’.

The huge 111-foot-wide dish has been in operation since 1972, five years before Voyager 2 was launched into space and has received its ‘most significant conversion’.

Philip Baldwin, operations manager for NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCAN) program, said: ‘The DSS 43 antenna is a very special system; There are two more similar antennas in the world, so keeping the antenna down for a year is not the ideal situation for Voyager or many other NASA missions. “

‘The company has decided to conduct these upgrades to ensure that antennas can continue to be used for current and future missions.’

“For an antenna that is about 50 years old, it is better to be active than to react to critical maintenance.”

The repairs not only helped Dish communicate with Voyager 2, but the upgrades will also benefit other missions, including the Marshall Perseverance Rover, which will land on Red Planet on February 18, 2021.