<div><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>After days of silence, NASA has heard from Voyager 2 in interstellar space billions of miles away.</b></span><br></div><div><br></div><div>Flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command nearly two weeks ago that tilted the spacecraft’s antenna away from Earth and severed contact.</div><div><br></div><div>NASA's Deep Space Network, giant radio antennas across the globe, picked up a “heartbeat signal," meaning the 46-year-old craft is alive and operating, project manager Suzanne Dodd said in an email Tuesday.</div><div><br></div><div>The news “buoyed our spirits,” Dodd said. Flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California will now try to turn Voyager 2’s antenna back toward Earth.</div><div><br></div><div>If the command doesn’t work — and controllers doubt it will — they’ll have to wait until October for an automatic spacecraft reset. The antenna is only 2% off-kilter.</div><div><br></div><div>“That is a long time to wait, so we'll try sending up commands several times" before then, Dodd said.</div><div><br></div><div>Voyager 2 rocketed into space in 1977, along with its identical twin Voyager 1, on a quest to explore the outer planets.</div><div><br></div><div>Still communicating and working fine, Voyager 1 is now 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, making it the most distant spacecraft.</div><div><br></div><div>Voyager 2 trails its twin in interstellar space at more than 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from Earth. At that distance, it takes more than 18 hours for a signal to travel one way. - AP</div><div><br></div><div>bnbd24/fas</div><div><br></div>