LONG-DISTANCE CALL

NASA Hears ‘Heartbeat’ From Voyager 2 Probe After 11-Day Radio Silence

But the agency may not be able to re-establish full communications with the interstellar spacecraft.

Space fans can breathe a sigh of relief—sort of. NASA has detected a signal from Voyager 2 after losing contact with the probe almost two weeks ago. The agency’s Deep Space Network, a sprawling array of radio antennas across the planet designed for extremely long-distance communications throughout the solar system, managed to pick up a faint “heartbeat signal” from the 46-year-old spacecraft—currently 12.3 billion miles from Earth. NASA had lost contact with Voyager 2 on July 2 after an erroneous command caused it to move its antenna a mere 2 degrees away from Earth and sever contact outright. The detection of this new signal provides an opening for NASA to send a new command to move Voyager 2’s antenna back into position and re-establish contact—but “there is a low probability that this will work,” Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager, told reporters Tuesday. Voyager 2, like its twin Voyager 1, was launched in 1977. Both are currently hurtling through interstellar space; Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles away, making it the most distant spacecraft ever.