Keeping an eye on CSIRO's Tidbinbilla website might yield some info as they get around to writing things up. It's the "horse's mouth" so to speak, as all Voyager communications goes via Tidbinbilla.
So basically exceeding the transmitter's normal operating range in hopes that Voyager 2 can hear it somehow. I'm guessing that between possibly destroying that transmitter (and having an expensive repair/rebuilding bill) and never hearing V2 again they've chose the first option. It honestly puts me in doubt on the chances that the self-realignment will work despite knowing that NASA have tested than mechanism more than what would a normal manufacturer have done.
I don't think anything is being exceeded. I have no idea of the actual numbers. but the calculation is something like. using the 100 meter dish we need to transmit at 30 kilowatts to make sure the signal can be received by voyeger2.
voyeger2 high gain is 2 degrees off, (do some black magic RF math) we need to transmit at 60 kilowatts to make sure the signal is received. good thing this transmitter is capable of 5 megawatts of radiative power.
Now I just made up those numbers. but the cool thing about nasa is how open they are. both when things go wrong "whoops we misaligned voyeger 2" and with specs, it probably won't take me long at all to find actual numbers.
> The probe would have reoriented itself towards the Earth in October, it does so twice a year.
I know that's what they say, but does anyone have any more details about that, too?
It's hard for me to reconcile the idea that the probe can automatically re-orient itself with the idea that it somehow got accidentally pointed in the wrong direction. You'd think they'd end every set of commands with instructions to check orientation and fix it if it's wrong.
