NASA approached Voyager 2 using an upgraded deep space network dish

Oct. On the 29th, mission administrators sent a series of commands to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft for the first time since mid-March. The spacecraft is flying alone while the 70-meter-wide (230-foot-wide) radio antenna used to talk to it is offline flying for repairs and upgrades. Voyager 2 returned the signal that it had received a “call” and that commands had been executed without issue.

The call to Voyager 2 is a test of new hardware recently installed on Deep Space Station 43, the only dish in the world that can send commands to Voyager 2. Located in Canberra, Australia, it is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), a collection of radio antennas from around the world used primarily to communicate with spacecraft operating outside the moon. Since the dish flew offline, mission administrators have been able to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but they have not been able to send orders for inland investigations that have traveled billions of miles from Earth since 1977. Launch.

Upgrades to the DSS 43, as Dish is known, have two new radio transmitters. One of them, used to talk to Voyager 2, hasn’t changed in 47 years. Engineers have also upgraded the heating and cooling devices, power supply devices and other electronics needed to operate the new transmitters.

The successful Voyager 2 call is the only indication that the dish will be online again in February 2021.

“The reason we make this work unique is that we’re working on all levels of antennas, from ground level pedals to feedcons in the center of the dim that extends over the rim,” said Brad Arnold, DSN project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California. “This test communication with Voyager 2 certainly tells us that things are on track by what we’re doing.”

Worldwide network

The Deep Space Network is made up of radio antenna features that are uniform in Canberra worldwide; Goldstone, California; And Madrid, Spain. The position of all three features ensures that almost any spacecraft with a line of sight on Earth can interact with at least one feature at any one time.

Voyager 2 is a rare exception. In 1989, a probe flew over the Earth’s North Pole to create a flyby near Neptune’s moon Triton. That path turned south in comparison to the plane of the planets and has been moving in that direction ever since. Now more than 11.6 billion miles (18.8 billion kilometers) from Earth, the spacecraft is so south that it has no line of sight with radio antennas in the Northern Hemisphere.

The DSS 43 is the only vessel in the Southern Hemisphere whose transmitter is powerful enough to transmit the right frequency to send a command to a spacecraft. The fast-moving twins of Voyager 2, Voyager 1 took a different route closer to Saturn, and in the Northern Hemisphere DSN can communicate via antennas on two features. The antenna must uplink commands to both Voyagers in the radio frequency range named S-band, and the antenna downlink data from the spacecraft in the range named X-band.

Mission operators have not been able to command Voyager 2 since the DSS went offline43 offline offline, with three 34-meter-wide (111-foot-wide) radio antennas in the Canberra facility sending simultaneous Voyager 2 signals to receive signals. Earth. International space, or sending data back from the field outside our sun’s heliosphere – planets and the Kuiper belt (a collection of small, icy objects outside Neptune’s orbit) particles created by the sun and a protective bubble of magnetic field. ).

DSS 43 was launched in 1972 (five years before the launch of Voyager 2 and Voyager 1) and at that time was only 64 meters (210 feet) wide. It was expanded to 70 meters (230 feet) in 1987 and has since undergone a variety of upgrades and repairs. But engineers overseeing the current work say the dish is one of the most significant innovations achieved and the longest it has been flying offline for 30 years.

“The DSS 4343 antenna is a very specialized system; there are two other similar antennas in the world, so keeping the antenna down for a year is not an ideal situation for Voyager or for many other NASA missions,” said Philip Baldwin, operations manager. For NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCAN) program. “The agency has decided to carry out these improvements to ensure that antennas can continue to be used for current and future missions. Antennas, which are almost 10 years old, are better off being active than reacting with critical maintenance.”

The repairs will benefit other missions, including the Mars Perseverance Rover, which will land on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021. The network will also play a crucial role in lunar-Mars research efforts, ensuring communications and navigation support for both. Predecessor Moon and Mars missions and crew Artemis missions.