NASA revealed in October that it had reconnected with the Voyager 1 spacecraft after a “brief pause in communications.”

The flight team had sent a command to the craft to turn on one of its heaters.

However, a few days later, communication seemed to completely break down.

“The spacecraft typically communicates with Earth using what is called an X-band radio transmitter,” the space agency explained.

NASA suspected that the craft might have turned off its X-band transmitter and decided to switch to a second radio transmitter called S-band to try to establish contact with Voyager 1.

Scientists weren’t sure this plan would work, because Voyager 1 hadn’t used it to communicate with Earth since 1981 — and S-band transmits with a weaker signal.

However, it did – and they were able to reconnect with the aging profession.

The team is now trying to figure out what happened and return Voyager 1 to normal operations.