NASA is on the lookout for any signal from a spacecraft it lost contact with following a mildly embarrassing case of human error.
The space agency hasn’t heard a peep from Voyager 2 since last week, when flight commanders accidentally pinged across an incorrect command that saw it tilt its antenna away from Earth.
Given the craft is billions of miles from our planet, it may not be until October when contact is re-established as that’s when it’s due for an automatic reset.
NASA hopes it might be able to detect Voyager 2 sooner via a huge dish antenna in Canberra, Australia – but it takes more than 18 hours for any signal to get to Earth from such a distance.
On the plus side, Voyager 2 certainly knows its way around the cosmos – it was launched way back in 1977.
It’s managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and is the only spacecraft to have visited either Neptune or Uranus – our Solar System’s ice giant planets.
It’s also visited gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.
Its identical twin, Voyager 1, is also still in space and in touch with Earth from a whopping 15 million miles away. It’s humanity’s most distant spacecraft.
Both craft are to be powered down over the next few years, potentially as soon as 2025.
