this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023

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Space

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NASA temporarily loses contact with one of its most distant spacecraft | Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/space

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[–] Sylver 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Usually it’s accomplished with gyroscopes, not RCS fuels. It has a schedule where it auto-orients itself to point back toward Earth, that next scheduled self-fix is in October.

As for how it knows what exact point to look at, I’m not sure! Maybe we’re constantly streaming a radio signal for it to see