zlacker

>>belter+(OP)
In short, it was remote bricked, by giving it commands to rotate a bit. After successfully executing those commands - no further commands could be received, as now the antennas are not facing earth anymore.

But luckily it automatically readjust itself to earth automatically every half year exactly for these events. So on 15.10 we will know, if it is really lost. In either case, the end of its mission is near anyway, because the nuclear batteries are near its end.

edit: Nasa has a blog post on this https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2023/07/28/mission-update-voy...

>>hutzli+79
How the heck does it know where earth is?

That's some impressive science there, not like there is a deep-space GPS.

Does it look for the sun and figure out from there?

>>ck2+P61
I assume star tracking -- wikipedia seems to confirm

"... and celestial referencing instruments (Sun sensor/Canopus Star Tracker) to maintain pointing of the high-gain antenna toward Earth"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2

>>gregsa+j91
Sorry to self-reply, but this Q&A on "Space Overflow" about this specific star tracker is great:

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/43803/how-did-the-...