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   Dave Anderson (danderson@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 28-Apr-2023 23:41:57 JST Dave Anderson

   in reply to

   A lesser team would have declared the spacecraft lost after concluding the receivers were no longer working. But the badasses running Voyager figured out that they could make the Deep Space Network sweep the range of frequencies where V2's receiver _could_ be listening, then lock onto an adjusted frequency ground-side to compensate for the wonky receiver.

   And so, for the last 44 years, every couple weeks, the DSN does a search to find where Voyager 2's receiver is hanging out today.

   • clacke likes this.
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     Dave Anderson (danderson@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 28-Apr-2023 23:41:58 JST Dave Anderson

     Today I'm remembering one of the coolest space things ever: Voyager 2's S-band radio receiver has been broken for 44 years, and yet we can still talk to it.

     Back in 1978 the primary receiver failed, and the team discovered the backup receiver had a faulty capacitor in the PLL circuit that adjusted for Doppler shift. Since then, Voyager 2's receive bandwidth has been much narrower, and the band-pass window wanders back and forth by a few hundred Hz with temp changes.

     clacke repeated this.