NASA is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after shedding contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away.

Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar area, Voyager 2 has been out of contact ever since flight controllers by chance despatched a unsuitable command greater than per week in the past that tilted its antenna away from Earth. The spacecraft’s antenna shifted a mere 2%, but it surely was sufficient to chop communications.

Although it’s thought of a protracted shot, NASA mentioned Monday that its enormous dish antenna in Canberra, Australia, is looking out for any stray alerts from Voyager 2, presently greater than 12 billion miles distant. It takes greater than 18 hours for a sign to achieve Earth from so far-off.

In the approaching week, the Canberra antenna — a part of NASA’s Deep Space Network — additionally will bombard Voyager 2’s neighborhood with the right command, in hopes it hits its mark, in keeping with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Voyager missions.

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Otherwise, NASA should wait till October for an automated spacecraft reset that ought to restore communication, in keeping with officers.

Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 to discover the outer planets, only a couple weeks forward of its an identical twin, Voyager 1.

Still in contact with Earth, Voyager 1 is now practically 15 billion miles away, making it humanity’s most distant spacecraft.