When Voyager 2 Calls Home, Earth Soon Won’t Be Able to Answer - The New York Times

When Voyager 2 Calls Home, Earth Soon Won’t Be Able to Answer - The New York Times

Hanging up on Voyager 2

Starting on Monday, part of the Deep Space Network will go offline — the global group of telescopes that allows NASA, the European Space Agency and other space agencies to talk to their far-flung spacecraft. The powerful radio antennas located in California, Australia and Spain need maintenance to prepare for a spate of Mars missions launching this summer. That will leave one spacecraft out in the cold: the 43-year-old Voyager 2, which can hear only from a single antenna in the network because of its trajectory relative to Earth. Data will still be received from Voyager 2, but it will have to survive without instructions from Earth for 11 months.

The New York Times | 5 min read