this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Programmer Humor

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wikipedia states: "In July 2023, communication with Voyager 2 was lost when flight control pointed its antenna away from Earth, moving it by 2 degrees away from Earth. The NASA dish antenna in Canberra is being used to search for the space probe and will be used to saturate its location with commands to re-align the probe's antenna in an attempt to re-establish the radio link. If NASA fails to contact the probe, it is expected that an automatic system on Voyager 2 will direct its dish toward Earth in October 2023."

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

So essentially someone probably wanted to move it one way and it moved the other. It should automatically reposition itself in contact with NASA in 2 months. It's amazing the foresight we had in 1977 to write in all sorts of catch-alls... In 2 months we'll get back in contact with the probe and it will have its own place, hanging out with aliens.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Great that they included these automatic hardware resets. Way to go if your computer will never see a human or human-made thing ever again