Nasa says its most distant probe is once again sending usable information back to Earth
The US space agency says its Voyager-1 probe is once again sending usable information back to Earth after months of spouting gibberish.
The 46-year-old Nasa spacecraft is humanity's most distant object.
A computer fault stopped it returning readable data in November but engineers have now fixed this.
For the moment, Voyager is sending back only health data about its onboard systems, but further work should get the scientific instruments back online.
"Voyager-1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems," Nasa said in a statement.
"The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again."
A corrupted chip has been blamed for the ageing spacecraft's recent woes.
For a period of time, engineers could get no sense whatsoever out of Voyager, even though they could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally.
Voyager-1 departed Earth on 5 September 1977, a few days after its sister spacecraft, Voyager-2.
How much longer the Voyagers can continue is uncertain, but engineers have until now always come up with strategies to eke out a few extra years of operations.