It is humanity's second most distant spacecraft, trailing only its twin in how far it has ventured from Earth.

But the legendary Voyager 2 gave NASA engineers a scare last month when an embarrassing case of human error saw the US space agency lose contact with the 46-year-old probe.

A wrong command was sent to the spacecraft, causing it to point its antenna just two degrees away from Earth but enough for NASA to 'lose' Voyager 2's position in space.

However, yesterday the space agency said a 'heartbeat' signal had been picked up during a regular scan of the sky.

This confirmed Voyager 2 was alive and operating - but where exactly in space is the probe and its twin Voyager 1? MailOnline takes a look.

Where is Voyager 2?

Voyager 2 is currently in the constellation of Pavo, more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometres) away from Earth.

This means it takes two days for engineers to send a message to the spacecraft and get a response.

Over the past five decades it has raced past the planets in our solar system, breezed beyond the Kuiper Belt and ultimately reached the beginning of the edge of our solar system.

Having escaped the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the sun, the spacecraft and its twin are now exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before.