![The encapsulation of Voyager 2 in 1977.](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/38-The-FarthestVoyager-Construction-in-LabJPL-800x789.jpg)
NASA
NASA lost contact with its Voyager 2 spacecraft—the second-most distant object ever built by humans and flung into space—nearly two weeks ago resulting from an errant command sent to the probe. This caused Voyager to point its antenna barely away from Earth.
On the time, the space agency said it wasn’t panicking. The mission’s scientists believed they’d several options to revive communications with the half-century-old probe. And in order that they did.
In an update posted Friday, NASA said all is now well once more with Voyager 2. NASA’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, was in a position to send a “shout” command to Voyager instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself right into a proper position to facilitate communication with Earth.
It took 18.5 hours for the signal to achieve the spacecraft, which is now 19.9 billion kilometers away from Earth. Finally, after a complete of 37 hours, a signal returned from the probe. Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, at 12:29 am ET, Voyager 2 began streaming back science and telemetry data.
Accordingly, the venerable probe is healthy, on target, and communicating with NASA once more.
Prior to the launch of Voyager 1 and a couple of in 1977 on two different rockets, humans had been gazing at fuzzy blobs within the outer Solar System for a whole lot of years. Pioneer 10 and 11 provided some higher views of Jupiter and Saturn, but still, little or no was known in regards to the planets or their moons. Next to nothing was known of Uranus and Neptune. The Voyagers uncovered complex planetary systems and incredible moons, equivalent to volcano-covered Io, icy Europa, and Titan, with its methane seas.
And of their old age, the 2 probes have kept on exploring. Voyager 1, at a distance of 24 billion km from Earth, and Voyager 2 have each left the Solar System, exploring the barren but scientifically interesting interstellar medium.