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 should point at that astronomical navigation is a remarkable skill that was developed and turned into routine calculations in a relatively short period of time. The first order calculations are based on star imaging and used a Kalman filter,which had been invented just a few years before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter#History) along with a star catalog (list of known star locations relative to the sun/earth) and direct observation by astronauts. I think a sextant was useful.

Second order calculations use careful analysis of the signal pattern in telemetry data- IIRC you can see a slow stretch of the phase which can be used to estimate distance and velocity with high accuracy.

Voyager, along with Apollo, stand as the finest examples of human engineering done yet- we got a bunch of people to the moon and back, and built a probe that still operates 50 years later... farther than anything else humans have launched... I'd be lucky if I can deploy my web app once a week.

>>dekhn+MD2
yeah, it really puts my god awful pile of terraform in perspective.