One Dish in Australia Is Earth's Only Link to Voyager 2

When NASA needs to talk to Voyager 2 — its probe now drifting through interstellar space some 18 billion kilometres away — there is exactly one dish on Earth that can do the job. It sits at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia, and it is called Deep Space Station 43 (DSS-43).

The reason is geometry. To fly close past Neptune’s moon Triton in 1989, Voyager 2 was slung sharply south of the planets’ orbital plane. From down there it can only be seen by antennas in the Southern Hemisphere — and DSS-43 is the only one powerful enough to reach it.

“The only dish in the world that can send commands to Voyager 2.” — NASA

The antenna is a 70-metre parabolic giant, weighing more than 3,000 tonnes and standing 73 metres tall. Built in the early 1970s, it underwent major transmitter upgrades in 2020 that took it offline for months, leaving NASA temporarily unable to send the spacecraft any new instructions. Receiving Voyager’s faint signal is easier; commanding it is the bottleneck.