NASA fully restores contact with Voyager 2 spacecraft

NASA said Friday that it had fully restored communications with the Voyager 2 deep spacecraft, weeks after a mistaken command from flight controllers accidentally caused the probe to go dark.

Voyager 2 lost communications with NASA two weeks ago after a wrong command titled its antenna away from Earth. After a series of attempts, NASA finally got communications running again after the agency's Deep Space Network "sent the equivalent of an interstellar 'shout'...instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said.

Early Friday morning, the vessel "began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory," the JPL added.

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The re-establishment of communications is likely to be a relief for NASA. While it did pick up a faint "heartbeat signal" from Voyager 2 earlier this week, agency officials worried that communications wouldn't be fully restored until this October, when the probe was scheduled to automatically reorient itself back to Earth. Given that this would be another two months to wait, NASA tried "sending up commands several times," JPL project manager Suzanne Dodd told The Associated Press. The last-ditch effort from the Deep Space Network has now appeared to pay off.

Launched in 1977 to explore the depths of space, Voyager 2 is currently about 12.4 billion miles from Earth, according to Space.com (which is owned by The Week's parent company, Future plc). The only manmade object that is further away from Earth is the craft's twin, Voyager 1, which was launched a few weeks later and is currently 15 billion miles from Earth.

Voyager 2 entered interstellar space — the space between stars — in December 2018. Voyager 1 did so in 2012, becoming the first manmade object to leave the solar system.