NASA picks up 'heartbeat' signal from missing Voyager 2 spacecraft

NASA has received a small glimmer of hope after losing contact with the Voyager 2 probe, 12 billion miles away in the galaxy.

The space government agency accidentally issued the wrong command to its Voyager 2 - which has been exploring the universe since 1977 - and sent it in the wrong direction.

'Ctrl + Shift + oh s***'.

The probe stopped receiving instructions and lost data translation.

Basically, they lost it.

"A series of planned commands sent to NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 inadvertently caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth," NASA said.

"As a result, Voyager 2 is currently unable to receive commands or transmit data back to Earth."

"The science data that the Voyagers are returning gets more valuable the farther away from the Sun they go, so we are definitely interested in keeping as many science instruments operating for as long as possible," explained Linda Spilker, Voyager's project scientist at JPL.

NASA

However, according to NASA’s Deep Space Network - made up of giant radio antennas across the globe - the team has picked up a 'heartbeat signal' after two weeks of nothing.

This means that the Voyager 2 of 46 years is still alive and kicking.

Project manager Suzanne Dodd said the news has 'buoyed our spirits'.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California has activated its flight controllers, which it hopes will sway Voyager 2’s antenna back toward Earth.

If the command doesn’t work — and controllers doubt it will — they’ll have to wait until October for an automatic spacecraft reset. The antenna is only two percent off-kilter.

Dodd added: “That is a long time to wait, so we’ll try sending up commands several times before then".

NASA

Back in 1977, Voyager 2 jumped into space along with its identical twin Voyager 1.

Their mission was to explore the outer planets of our solar system.

Voyager 1 remains in great condition and is the most distant spacecraft, a whopping 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometres) from Earth.

"You might have heard... Voyager 2 is taking a break from sending data until October. In the meantime, I'm out here, almost 15 billion miles (24 billion km) from Earth and doing fine! - V1", wrote NASA on X, formerly known as Twitter, last week.

Voyager 2 trails its twin in interstellar space at more than 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometres) from Earth.

At that distance, it takes more than 18 hours for a signal to travel one way.