The spacecraft has been flying solo while the 230-foot-wide deep space radio antenna used to communicate with it has been offline for repairs and upgrades. On 29 October NASA mission operators sent a series of commands and Voyager 2 returned a signal confirming it had received the “call” and executed them without problems.

The team sent these commands using new hardware recently installed on Deep Space Station 43 – located in Canberra, Australia – the only dish in the world that can send commands to Voyager 2. Since it went offline, mission operators have been able to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but could not send commands.

Brad Arnold, the DSN project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California said the test communication with Voyager 2 definitely tells him that things are on track with the work the team is doing.