Reasons for losing contact with a probe?

[GungaDin]

I lost contact with a science probe which was chasing after Mars. It has electricity and 2 High Gain antennas and my tracking center on Earth is fully upgraded.  Any ideas on why this might have happened?

[Superfluous J]

5 minutes ago, GungaDin said:

I lost contact with a science probe which was chasing after Mars. It has electricity and 2 High Gain antennas and my tracking center on Earth is fully upgraded.  Any ideas on why this might have happened?

There are only 4 ways to lose contact (that I know of. in b4 someone tells me the 5th, 6th, and 7th way I forgot about) without doing something intentional:

1. Out of power. Check yer batteries.
2. Out of range. Check yer signal strength. If you have a save from before it happened load it and check the strength there to see if it's low and getting lower.
3. Something is in the way. If you got to Mars and are behind it from Earth's perspective.
4. All your tracking stations are on the other side of Earth.

If I had to guess I'd say #2, likely due to the larger size of the Real Solar System and possibly due to not having your antennas beefed up to compensate.

Edited December 3, 2019 by 5thHorseman

[paul23]

5 minutes ago, GungaDin said:

I lost contact with a science probe which was chasing after Mars. It has electricity and 2 High Gain antennas and my tracking center on Earth is fully upgraded.  Any ideas on why this might have happened?

Is the antenna activated, and in vanilla the high gain antenna won't reach the distance between earth and mars.