“I think there was probably a sigh of relief there,” Mr. Nagle said. “And we were very happy to confirm that the spacecraft was still talking to us.”
The work received high marks from NASA officials in the United States.
“The DSN people in Canberra have done a remarkable job in the pandemic circumstances by upgrading DSS 43,” said Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager mission’s project manager and director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Interplanetary Network Directorate. “I have 100 percent confidence in that antenna that it will work fine for a few more decades. Way back when the Voyagers are done. “
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 hold the records for the farthest a spacecraft has ever traveled and for the longest operational mission. Voyager 2 has had a few hiccups over the years, but still feels its way in the dark, making discoveries about the boundaries that separate our solar system from the rest of the Milky Way.
“I’ve seen scientists with a background in astrophysics now looking at Voyager data and trying to match it with data they have from ground-based telescopes or other space telescopes,” said Ms. Dodd. “It’s quite exciting going from a planetary mission to the heliophysical mission and now practically an astrophysical mission.”
While Voyager 2 continues to lug around, Ms. Dodd and her colleagues prepare to disable one of its scientific sensors, the Low Energy Charged Particle instrument. This allows the spacecraft’s limited power supply to keep its other systems, especially the communications antenna, warm enough to function.
While that will reduce the spacecraft’s scientific output, its main goal now is longevity.
“The challenge is not in the new technology or the great discoveries,” said Ms. Dodd. “The challenge is to make it work for as long as possible and to return the scientific data for as long as possible.”
The team estimates that both spacecraft will be able to operate for another four to eight years, and NASA gave the team three more years of flight time last year.