Voyager 2 Back in Touch with Earth After Brief Communications Outage

Voyager 2, the second of NASA's Voyager probes, has re-established contact with Earth after a brief communications outage. The spacecraft, which is now 19.9 billion kilometers away from Earth, experienced a problem with its attitude control system on July 29. This caused the probe to reorient itself in a way that prevented it from sending or receiving signals.

NASA engineers were able to send a "shout" command to Voyager 2 to reorient itself, and the spacecraft responded by sending a signal back to Earth on August 3. The signal took 37 hours to travel the distance between Voyager 2 and Earth, but it confirmed that the probe is still in good health and continuing to explore the interstellar medium.

Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 and is now the farthest human-made object from Earth. It is expected to continue operating until at least 2025 when its power supply will be depleted.

Source: Ars Technica