NASA mysteriously fixes Voyager-2's interstellar glitch from 11.5 billion miles away

In yet another stupendous effort, NASA has managed to fix its Voyager-2 probe remotely, almost 11.5 billion miles away from its location, this week as per international reports. The probe has reportedly been acting in an unexpected manner as it failed to carry out a maneuver as planned on January 25. Moreover, the glitch in the probe was detected by the spacecraft’s fault detection software which was relayed to NASA.

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What did NASA do?

Reports state that on detection of the glitch, the spacecraft's fault detection software shutdown Voyager 2's science instruments. Soon, NASA engineers had managed to successfully powered down one of the systems and had also managed to reboot some of the science instruments. But it had failed to gather any new data, as per reports.

Subsequently, NASA informed on February 5, "Mission operators report that Voyager 2 continues to be stable and that communications between Earth and the spacecraft are good. The spacecraft has resumed taking science data. Science teams are now evaluating the health of the instruments following their brief shutoff".

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What is Voyager 2?

Launched in 1977, Voyager-2 is the twin of Voyager-1 which was launched a few weeks prior to it. Both probes were launched to perform a 'grand tour' of the outer solar system. Both spacecraft have conducted flybys of Jupiter and Saturn - with Voyager 2 successfully zooming past Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989, making it the only spacecraft to have had a close look of the icy planets.

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Soon, both probes continued, entering extended interstellar missions. While Voyager 1 flew into interstellar space in August 2012, Voyager-2  followed it six years later in 2018. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are currently about 13.8 billion miles (22.2 billion kilometers) and 11.5 billion miles (13.5 billion km) from Earth, respectively. It takes more than 17 hours for light to travel from Earth to Voyager 2, as per reports.

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