Contact restored.
That was the message relieved NASA officials shared after the agency regained full contact with the Voyager 1 space probe, the most distant human-made object in the universe, scientists announced Monday.
For the first time since November, the spacecraft is now returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems, NASA said in a news release.
The 46-year-old pioneering probe, now some 15.1 billion miles from Earth, has continually defied expectations for its lifespan as it ventures further into the uncharted territory of the cosmos.