Image Source: Agencies

NASA's Deep Space Network on Wednesday sent a new command to realign the antenna, using the most powerful transmitter on Australia's massive radio antenna. The Voyager 2 antenna only had to be moved 2 degrees.
It took more than 18 hours for the command to reach Voyager 2, more than 19 billion kilometers away, and another 18 hours for the response.
The long shot paid off. The spacecraft began returning data on Friday, according to officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "I just sighed. I collapsed in my chair," project manager Suzanne Dodd told The Associated Press.
"The back of Voyager," said project scientist Linda Spilker.
Voyager 2 has been in space since its launch in 1977 to explore the outer solar system. Voyager 1, the twin that launched two weeks later, is now the most distant spacecraft - 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away - and still in contact. Dodd said the two-week outage was NASA's longest time without hearing from Voyager 2.
According to Dodd, the travelers could be alive and well by the 50th anniversary in 2027 as long as they have enough plutonium power. Among the scientific clues in recent years are the details of the interstellar magnetic field and the abundance of cosmic rays.
"We've been very smart over the last 10 years to extract every little watt," Dodd said. "Hopefully one of them will make it to 50. But they are old, and the events that have just happened scare me as much as they make it a milestone.