Tuesday 21 June 2022 01:19 PM NASA prepares to power-down Voyager spacecraft after 44 years trends now
They have spent the best part of half a century travelling farther from Earth than any other man-made objects.
But the two Voyager spacecraft are now entering their final phase, with NASA eyeing a potential timeline for their powering-down.
Voyager 1 is currently 14.5 billion miles (23.3bn km) from Earth, a distance which takes 20 light hours and 33 minutes to travel, while Voyager 2 is 12 billion miles and 18 hours' light distance from us.
It means it takes two days for engineers to send a message to the spacecraft and get a response.
Both Voyagers launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 1977 — with Voyager 2 departing a month earlier than 1 — and were designed to last five years to study Jupiter and Saturn.
They have far exceeded that, however, having been travelling for 44 years, but NASA is now planning to begin turning off some of the Voyagers' systems in the hope of eking out the spacecrafts' remaining power to extend their journeys to about 2030.
Speaking to the magazine Scientific American about powering down the Voyagers, NASA physicist Ralph McNutt said: 'We're at 44 and a half years, so we've done 10 times the warranty on the darn things.'
End of an era: They have spent the best part of half a century travelling farther from Earth than any other man-made objects. But it appears the two Voyager spacecraft are entering their final phase, with NASA eyeing a potential timeline for their powering-down. Voyager 1 (pictured) is currently 14.5 billion miles (23.3bn km) from Earth
Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in August 2012 - and is continuing to collect data. No manmade object has travelled further than NASA's iconic spacecraft
Speaking to the magazine Scientific American about powering down the spacecraft, NASA physicist Ralph McNutt said: 'We're at 44 and a half years, so we've done 10 times the warranty on the darn things.' Voyager 2 (pictured) is 12 billion miles and 18 hours' light distance from us
Uranus' icy moon Miranda is seen in this image from Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986. Unfortunately, Nasa predicts that it will have to turn off the last science instrument by 2030. But even after the spacecraft go silent, they will continue their journey, completing an orbit within the Milky Way every 225 million years
Neptune's blue-green atmosphere is shown in greater detail than ever before by the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it rapidly approaches its encounter with the giant planet
The Voyager spacecraft were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which continues to operate both.
NASA launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft on September 5 1977, and the Voyager 2 on August 20 1977.
Each spacecraft carries a golden record on board – a record that includes sounds, pictures and messages of Earth.
Continuing on their more-than-37-year journey since their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the sun than Pluto.
In August 2012, Voyager 1 made the historic entry into interstellar space, the region between stars, filled with material ejected by the death of nearby stars millions of years ago.
Humanity's farthest and longest-live spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, have been travelling through space for more than 44 years. NASA launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft on September 5 1977, and the Voyager 2 on August 20 1977
This archival photo shows engineers working on the Voyager 2 spacecraft on March 23, 1977. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have flown by all four outer planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
Voyager 2 entered interstellar space on November 5, 2018.
Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network, or DSN.
The primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn.
After making a string of discoveries there — such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings — the mission was extended.
Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets.
The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the sun's domain. And beyond.
Source: NASA
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The two probes are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) – which are powered by the heat from decaying spheres of plutonium.
However, the output of these RTGs is decreasing by about four watts every year, which means the instruments on both Voyagers are being turned off one by one.
Voyager 1 now has just four functioning instruments left, while Voyager 2 has five.
Some estimate that they could come to the end of their life as early as 2025, with the plutonium powering the spacecraft decaying beyond what is necessary to keep them going.
However, others are more optimistic and think the Voyagers could yet continue into the next decade.
Having just passed Uranus on February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 captured our planet as a tiny dot (pictured). Four years later the astronomer Carl Sagan reflected on the significance of the photograph to an audience at Cornell University, famously coining its name as the 'Pale Blue Dot'
An image of Saturn taken in Voyager's blue and violet filters and processed to recreate an approximately natural colour and contrast
The spacecraft, currently further away from the Earth than any human-made object before it, launched 44 years ago to study the gas giants of the outer solar system
Thirteen days into its mission, after reaching a distance of 7.25 million miles, Voyager 1 turned its camera back toward Earth and snapped the first ever photograph of the Earth-moon system in a single frame (pictured)
