After Vogayer 2 lost contact with Earth due to misaligned antenna, and the detection of a "heartbeat" not long afterwards, full communications with the probe has been restored, reports NASA. It is once again operating normally on its long journey out of the solar system.
The agency's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar "shout" more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.
12.3 billion miles and rolling!
