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LiveScience
LiveScience
Brandon Specktor

NASA accidentally severs contact with Voyager 2 probe 12 billion miles from Earth

An illustration of the small Voyager probe drifting away from the bright glare of our sun

NASA has temporarily lost contact with the Voyager 2 probe — the second-farthest human made object from Earth in the universe, currently sailing through interstellar space roughly 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from home.

According to a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scientists lost contact with the probe on July 21 after a series of planned commands inadvertently caused Voyager 2 to angle its antenna away from Earth by about two degrees. Unable to transmit or receive messages from NASA's Deep Space Network — an international array of large radio antennas that support many of NASA's interplanetary missions — Voyager 2 is essentially adrift and alone in the dark of space, having left the outer edge of our solar system in November 2018.

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