NASA announced on Friday that it had fully restored communications with its legendary Voyager 2 probe, after inadvertently interrupting them at the end of July.
The probe, launched into space in 1977 and currently 19.9 billion kilometres from Earth, is “operating normally” and has remained “on its expected trajectory,” NASA said in a statement.
Commands sent on 21 July had mistakenly pointed the spacecraft’s antenna in the wrong direction, away from Earth, disrupting data communication.
This week, NASA confirmed that it had managed to detect Voyager 2’s signal using the “deep space network,” an international network of antennas, indicating that it was in “good health.”
The “equivalent of an interstellar scream” was then sent, ordering the probe to reorient itself and turn its antenna back towards Earth, NASA said on Friday. Scientists had warned that this technique was unlikely to work, but it finally paid off.
Given Voyager 2’s distance, the command took just over 18 hours to reach it, and it took the same amount of time before the result could be ascertained, NASA explained.
The US space agency confirmed that it was again receiving science and telemetry (distance measurement) data from the probe.
Before leaving the solar system, Voyager 2 became the only probe to complete a flyby of Uranus and Neptune.
