The Voyager space probes have spent the better part of half a century traveling farther from Earth than any other man-made object. But after 44 years at sea, they are nearing their final phase and NASA is considering phasing out the instruments on both.
Voyager 1 is 23.3 billion kilometers from Earth, a distance it takes to travel 20 light hours and 33 minutes, while Voyager 2 is 19,300 kilometers and 18 light hours away from us.
Time to turn off instruments
Time is ticking for both Voyagers. Since its launch in 1977 in Cape Canaveral, Florida (United States) a long time has passed. In fact, the space probes were designed to last five years (in order to study Jupiter and Saturn), but they have far exceeded that goal. However, NASA says they will soon run out of power. Goodbye forever? It seems.
The Voyager program was able to take advantage of a moment of cosmic coordination, when Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were aligned in such a way that the probes could visit each of these planets on their one-way trip away from Earth. The probes took images of Jupiter’s clouds, discovered new phenomena such as volcanic activity on Jupiter’s moon Io, and investigated Saturn’s rings.
it’s time for goodbye
The US space agency plans to begin shutting down some of the Voyagers’ systems in hopes of depleting the spacecraft’s remaining power to extend their journeys until around 2030 . Vehicles will run out of power completely by 2025, and NASA wants to phase out functionality as needed to extend their life.
The science carried out by the Voyager probes is as relevant as ever; has not lost relevance. Just this week, a team of researchers published their findings from Voyager data in The Astrophysical Journal.
History
The Voyager spacecraft was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which continues to control both. NASA launched the Voyager 1 spacecraft on September 5, 1977 and Voyager 2 on August 20, 1977. Each spacecraft carried a gold record on board, which was called ‘ The Sounds of Earth’ . ), a registry that includes sounds, images and messages from Earth chosen by NASA and a small committee of scientists, chaired by astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan.
Continuing on their journey, each of them is much further 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 deaths of nearby stars millions of years ago. The fact that both are still working is incredible, given that they were originally designed for a very short mission. Its useful life has been extended up to 10 times.
An era closes . They may be able to continue operating until 2030, but after this date we will have to say goodbye to these two pioneering explorers, sailing alone in the dark. And this time, forever.
Reference: Magnetic Field Observations in the Very Local Interstellar Medium by Voyagers 1 and LF Burlaga , NF Ness, DB Berdichevsky, LK Jian, W Kurth5, J Park, J Rankin7, and A Szabo Published 2022 June 15 • © .The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 932, Number 1 Citation LF Burlaga et al 2022 ApJ
