Scientists are back in touch with a NASA spacecraft that has been silent since October 2014. NASA re-established contact with the STEREO-B spacecraft, one of two twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories, on Sunday evening. After 22 months of unanswered calls, the U.S. space agency managed to get in touch using the Deep Space Network, which tracks and communicates with its space missions. The twin STEREO spacecraft are designed to measure and study the sun and its coronal mass ejections — powerful eruptions of plasma from the sun's surface that can cause geomagnetic storms and auroras when they hit Earth's atmosphere. This graphic shows the positions of the two STEREO spacecraft and their orbits in relation to Earth, Venus, Mercury and the sun.

Source: CBC News August 23, 2016 18:56 UTC