back to article Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

NASA has successfully communicated with the Voyager 2 probe after an eight-month hiatus. The long break in conversation was due to necessary maintenance work on the only Earthly antenna capable today of sending signals to the probe, an effort that until now paused communications with Voyager 2. The antenna in question is …

  1. redpawn

    if you roll a large coin

    around the dish, how long would it take to drop into the hole in the center? Is there an Olympic swimming pool / Astronomical Unit / Signal Strength unit?

    Thanks for the upgrade!

  2. nil0

    DSN Now

    Just a quick reminder of https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html :-)

    1. Tom 7

      Re: DSN Now

      Why are tthose two in Canberra on fire?

      1. phuzz Silver badge

        Re: DSN Now

        If you mean the wibbly lines above them, I think that indicates that they're currently transmitting/receiving.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: DSN Now

      What happened to Deep Space 9 ?

      1. Chronos
        Coat

        Re: DSN Now

        It jumped the shark and ended up docked on the Worf...

  3. gerryg

    Not quite but nearly

    https://xkcd.com/1189/

    1. Kane

      Re: Not quite but nearly

      Trans-Neptunian Panic Zone!

      1. Gort99

        Re: Not quite but nearly

        Great name for a band.

        They can't sing, can't play and they look terrible. They'll go a long way.

  4. seven of five

    Pretty reckless

    > and the only antenna of that size in the southern hemisphere.

    Eh... bad idea?

    1. teknopaul

      Re: Pretty reckless

      but this is nasa, you did notice they spent 7 months working on an upgrade turned it on and it "just worked" including backwards compatability with 1977 and hardware latency of 17 light hours.

      1. seven of five

        Re: Pretty reckless

        Yes, until the only available antenna gets infested with dropbears and no can use it until they fought through all of XXXX malvolent fauna[1], flora and rocks to restore it into usable condition.

        On a more serious note:

        Having only one of something important is not a good idea, no matter how good of a job one does.

        [1] minus some of the sheep

        1. ThatOne Silver badge
          Unhappy

          Re: Pretty reckless

          > Having only one of something important is not a good idea

          Wait till even that single one gets its funding cut, because "waste of taxpayers' money" and "5G is better".

          Science isn't sexy nowadays, and space even less. While a lot of little boys in our generation dreamed of becoming astronauts, nowadays their dream is becoming a "gangsta"...

          Mumble mumble. Get off my lawn. Mumble.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Pretty reckless

            "Science isn't sexy nowadays"

            In current circumstances biological sciences might be catching people's interest. Make that "should be".

        2. Mark 85

          Re: Pretty reckless

          Yes, until the only available antenna gets infested with dropbears and no can use it until they fought through all of XXXX malvolent fauna[1], flora and rocks to restore it into usable condition,

          I would think that it would burn off the flora and fauna that might get on top of it. Sort of like a giant microwave oven.

      2. Flightmode

        Re: Pretty reckless

        This comment deserves more upvotes.

        Given the sorry state of our 2020 world, this is SO reassuring.

        1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Pretty reckless

          Can we in the UK get them (NASA) to take over 'Test and Trace'?

          (I'll get my coat, it's the one with the face mask in it.)

    2. Stevie

      Re: Pretty reckless

      Okay. You can put another one next to it.

      Where is it?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Re: Pretty reckless

      The first question is who is going to fund it. If it's NASA, what projects would they have to cut? The other logical player is China but that brings its own problems.

      The second question is where do you build it. Australia would be a bad choice because you'd want to separate the two. As far as stable democracies I would guess that New Zealand and Chile would be logical.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Pretty reckless

        >The second question is where do you build it.

        Patagonia - okay its a region shared by Chile and Argentina, so you could include it in 'Chile'.

        Antarctica - although the scientists working at the south pole might object.

      2. Pat Att

        Re: Pretty reckless

        But they want it in the Southern hemisphere...

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pretty reckless

        "If it's NASA, what projects would they have to cut?"

        They would get cut anyway. You know, Covid-19 expenses and all.

      4. A.P. Veening Silver badge

        Re: Pretty reckless

        The second question is where do you build it. Australia would be a bad choice because you'd want to separate the two.

        Australia is plenty big enough, somewhere near Perth would probably do nicely, it is about as far away from Canberra as Auckland (NZ).

  5. IGotOut Silver badge

    You know you need coffee when..

    ..you read the headline and think "How did they upgrade the ariel on Voyager?'

    1. Fred Dibnah

      Re: You know you need coffee when..

      The sub-headline was what caught my eye. Landing Voyager 2 on Mars would be pretty clever. Perhaps the command they sent was “Come in Number 2, your time is up”

      1. Tom 7

        Re: You know you need coffee when..

        Sorry number 5 do you need help?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Angel

        Re: You know you need coffee when..

        You are number 6.

        1. John 104

          Re: You know you need coffee when..

          Who is number 1?

        2. Snapper

          Re: You know you need coffee when..

          Are you in trouble number 9?

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: You know you need coffee when..

      "..you read the headline and think "How did they upgrade the ariel on Voyager?'"

      See next weeks On Call :-)

      1. ibmalone

        Re: You know you need coffee when..

        "A correspondent the regonynmiser has called Dave B"

        (just realised this works two ways, see if you can spot both!)

    3. bigphil9009

      Re: You know you need coffee when..

      I think they went from Non-bio to Bio, possibly with some added colour fasteners. ;-)

      1. phuzz Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: You know you need coffee when..

        Ah, and there was me thinking they'd changed to using Calibri.

  6. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Pint

    Good on ya mate!

    Excellent! Really impressive pieces of engineering (both the antenna and Voyager 2)

  7. Little Mouse
    Alien

    Blink and you miss it

    Maybe Voyager 2 went past all the really good stuff, just when we weren't paying attention.

    1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Blink and you miss it

      Thankfully it has magnetic tape storage on-board, so it can buffer the really good stuff and send it back later.

      1. Peter2 Silver badge

        Re: Blink and you miss it

        Hah, and people say tape is dead!

        Though to be honest i'm surprised that a tape drive and media has kept working (completely unmaintained) in that sort of harsh environment for fifty odd years.

        1. BenM 29 Silver badge

          Re: Blink and you miss it

          >>Hah, and people say tape is dead!

          People have been saying tape is dead since I were a lad (30+ years)... it's showing no real signs of actually going away yet!

          1. ThatOne Silver badge
            Coat

            Re: Blink and you miss it

            > it's showing no real signs of actually going away yet

            Especially the red one...

      2. Unicornpiss
        Happy

        Re: Blink and you miss it

        "Thankfully it has magnetic tape storage on-board, so it can buffer the really good stuff and send it back later."

        Or be used for a truly off-site backup.

        1. Glen 1

          Re: Blink and you miss it

          I remember reading a Harry Potter Fanfic where one of the horcruxes was the pioneer plaque (*checks* on pioneer 11)

  8. ForthIsNotDead
    Thumb Up

    Blows me away

    that they can still communicate with it. Current signal strength is -157dBm. Incredible.

    Bit rate is 159 b/sec, meaning it takes 70 seconds to send 1Kb (1024 bytes) of data, assuming 11 bits of data per byte - 1 start bit, 8 bits of data, one parity bit, one stop bit. To be honest though, it could take longer than that as they will be transmitting the data in such a way as to be able to reconstruct missing/garbled bits of serial data, which means introducing redundancy. But let's not talk about Hamming codes this early in the morning! Let us instead delight in the ingenuity and dogged determinedness of others to keep those lonely old probes in comms. Every time I think about Voyager it humbles me. Incredible.

    1. Dwarf

      Re: Blows me away

      @ForthIsNotDead

      I completely agree.

      Still don't understand though with all this technology that gets a network link 17.7Tm away, then how come we still struggle to get a mobile phone signal in large parts of the world or even have bad wifi coverage within our own houses.

      I guess its just one of the trade-offs of people not wanting to have a huge dish on top of their mobile phone or in their lounge and wanting a data rate to the Internet that is a bit higher than 159b/sec :-)

      * Yes, I know it gets smaller as the data rate goes up.

      1. eldakka
        Angel

        Re: Blows me away

        or even have bad wifi coverage within our own houses.

        I'm pretty sure that if you stuck a 70m parabolic antenna in every room of your house you'd have pretty good WiFi coverage.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Blows me away

          And a very big house.

          1. DS999 Silver badge

            Re: Blows me away

            Which is why you need the 70m dish!

      2. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

        Re: Blows me away

        I don't think the robust modulation scheme of a few bytes per second would be satisfying on your cell phone. You'd have a signal on Mars but all of the bandwidth would be consumed by the factory spyware.

    2. JonGodfrey
      Joke

      Re: Blows me away

      so.... slightly faster than my BT Broadband then....

      1. seven of five
        Joke

        Re: Blows me away

        ...and with seven months of downtime still better availability.

    3. Stevie

      Re: Blows me away

      Hamming codes? Hamming codes?

      Y' soft southern jessie!

      In my day it were mark space ratio er nowt, y'little bugger!

      Now get off my 'erbacious border wi' perennial 'ighlights an' fishin' gnome!

  9. m0rt

    I was away for several months

    and El Reg has dropped its standards.

    18,750,000,000km? No mention of this distance in a proper standard? Gnats' penises? Stoned whale lengths?

    1. ForthIsNotDead
      Thumb Up

      Re: I was away for several months

      Standard British Hat-stand length would be a suitable metric, me thinks. This is afterall a British IT rag!

      1. Dwarf

        Re: I was away for several months

        Even when they change to a .com domain name.

      2. m0rt

        Re: I was away for several months

        Actually - The Sean Connery (meherestinpeace) Dr No hat throw length should be the standard, methinks. And we can say there are Three 00s to one Oddjob. Simple.

    2. DJO Silver badge

      Re: I was away for several months

      If you must:

      It's a bit under 1 teraOsman but as it's adding a further 3 megaOsmans per hour it's close enough.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Chat logs

    Voyager 2, after being offline for 8 months: "So how's it going back on earth? I miss anything?"

    1. monty75

      Re: Chat logs

      And the reply "Not much. On a completely unrelated topic, did you pass any nice inhabitable worlds?"

    2. Stevie

      Re: Chat logs

      "Say! How'd you guys put that corona virus thingy to bed then?"

  11. bazza Silver badge

    News Digest

    Let’s hope they don’t transmit a brief news digest to Voyager, in case Vega returns not to seek and pair with the Creator but to put us out of our misery...

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nothing there..

    So what did it have to say for itself?

  13. John Done

    Voyager 2 was launched in 1977. He has already traveled billions of miles from Earth. In November 2019, Voyager 2 went beyond the solar system. And in October 2020, thanks to the device, it was possible to establish that space "thickens" with distance from the solar system.

    1. arachnoid2
      Joke

      Custard

      Its just like custard the colder it gets the thicker it is.

      Must be hard being a NASA robot, you get sent to some godforsaken place,all on your own and all you get to do is take pictures of rocks.

  14. Ashto5

    Amazing

    Seriously the voyager missions are just amazing

    I can’t run a modern phone without weekly updates

    1. ThatOne Silver badge

      Re: Amazing

      > I can’t run a modern phone without weekly updates

      Yeah well, the difference is profit. NASA hardware wasn't built for profit, so it just works.

      On the other side our modern phones are solely built for profit, so they only have to work till the warranty ends, after which they should break down so you have to buy a new one.

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