Voyager 2 phones home and says everything is cool

Enlarge / The encapsulation of Voyager 2 in 1977. (credit: 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 due to an errant command sent to the probe. This caused Voyager to point its antenna slightly away from Earth.

At the time, the space agency said it wasn't panicking. The mission's scientists believed they had several options to restore communications with the half-century-old probe. And so they did.

In an update posted Friday, NASA said all is now well once again with Voyager 2. NASA's Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, was able to send a "shout" command to Voyager instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself into a proper position to facilitate communication with Earth.