Deep space communication repairs allow Earth to resume communications with Voyager spacecraft

Repairs to the Deep Space Station 43 in Australia this week have enabled Earthbound scientists to once again communicate with the vastly distant Voyager 2 spacecraft after about a year of silence. 

The Australian station is the only means by which scientists can communicate with the Voyager 2 probe, launched in 1977 and now, at roughly 12 billion miles away, the farthest man-made object from Earth. 

Communications with Voyager 2 take about 35 hours to transmit round-trip. Voyager 1 and 2 are thus far the only man-made objects to have departed the Solar System and entered interstellar space. 

The probe is expected to continue transmitting weak messages for at least another few years.