Nasa and Voyager 2: 'Heartbeat' signal received from lost spacecraft

Nasa is trying to re-establish contact with Voyager 2 after communication was accidentally lost with the craft a week ago.

But things are looking up as the US space agency has picked up a "heartbeat" signal from the probe.

It's not the first time contact has been severed - in 2020 it was lost for eight months!

So how did this happen, will contact be restored and what is the spacecraft's mission? Read on for more.

Voyager's movements are directed remotely, from flight controllers here on Earth.

On 21 July it was discovered that contact with Voyager had been lost. Flight controllers had accidently sent the wrong command - which tilted the probe's antenna away from Earth.

Although, the radio antenna was only shifted 2% it was enough to cut communications.

Back in 2020 the Deep Space Station 43 radio antenna in Canberra, Australia, had to be turned off for major repairs.

It's the only dish in the world that can send commands to Voyager 2.

This meant Nasa was not able to tell Voyager 2 to do anything whilst the antenna was offline - for eight months.

Luckily when the space station was repaired contact was re-established with Voyager 2 and all was well.

The DSS-43 radio antenna in Australia has been looking out for any signals coming from Voyager 2 and bombarding the space probe.

Now a 'heartbeat' signal has been received by Nasa - and this signal will have taken 18 hours to reach Earth because Voyager 2 is 12 billion miles away.

If Nasa is unable to send commands to Voyager to change its angle so the antennae points in the right direction it will have to wait for an automatic space reset which hopefully will fix the communication cut out by pointing its antennae to Earth.

But this will not happen until 15 October.

Nasa is confident this if all else fails this "should enable communication to resume".

Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 - rocketing into space on a mission to explore the outer solar system as well as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The probe is one of a pair sent into space - there is also Voyager 1.

Voyager 2 has taken some of the most famous and detailed images of Earth's neighbourhood as it passed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Learn about Voyager 1 in the video below.