The Voyager mission team at NASA has been able to detect a signal from Voyager 2 after losing contact with the spacecraft, which has been operating for nearly 46 years.
“We enlisted the help of the (Deep Space Network) and Radio Science groups to help to see if we could hear a signal from Voyager 2,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “This was successful in that we see the ‘heartbeat’ signal from the spacecraft. So, we know the spacecraft is alive and operating. This buoyed our spirits.”
Is the “heartbeat” carrier signal being broadcast in all directions, or is there enough angular spread that we can pick up a bit of the signal if it’s two degrees off?
It’s a directional signal, and given the distances requires some precise alignment.
More problematic, it’s just really weak inverse square law means the signal is loosing a lot of its strength.