NASA has the mother of all network connectivity issues after aerial mishap 12.3 billion miles away

pcgamer.com:

NASA has lost contact with the Voyager 2 spacecraft after inadvertently turning its antenna .2 degrees away from Earth—a small misalignment made exponentially worse by the 12.3 billion miles that separate the ship from the planet Earth.

During a «series of planned commands» sent to the Voyager 2 spacecraft, NASA also made a small alignment change to the aerial direction. The seemingly tiny change has resulted in a loss of communication with the spacecraft, meaning it's not receiving NASA's commands and NASA isn't receiving the data it's sending back to Earth.

The Deep Space Network (DSN) is primarily responsible for communication with both the Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 spacecraft, an international network of antennas. The Voyager 2 mission primarily relies on the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex to receive data from the spacecraft. Back in 2018, when operating correctly, messages from the two spacecraft would take over 16.5 hours to reach Earth.

Alone in the universe for now, Voyager 2 will likely regain contact with Earth in October, when a regular failsafe engages.

The spacecraft is programmed to reset its antenna orientation multiple times a year to ensure a stable connection should anything happen to it. The next realignment is set to occur this October, and in the meantime the Voyager 2 is expected to carry on its mission in silence.

Voyager 2's mission is to study the outer planets and then depart the solar system. It's NASA's longest running mission, the spacecraft first being launched in 1977, 16 days prior to the launch of its twin, the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Since then, Voyager 2 has departed the heliosphere—the magnetic field around the solar system created by the Sun's solar wind—in 2018, and is now