the voyager spacecraft where is it now

The remarkable twin Voyager spacecraft continue to explore the outer reaches of the solar system decades after they completed their surveys of the Outer Planets.  Launched in 1977 (September 5 for Voyager 1 (V1) and August 20 for Voyager 2 (V2), whose trajectory took it past Jupiter after Voyager 1), the spacecraft pair made many fundamental discoveries as they flew past Jupiter (March 1979 for V1, July 1979 for V2) and Saturn (November 1980 for V1, August 1981 for V2).  The path of Voyager 2 past Saturn was targeted so that it continued within the plane of the solar system, allowing it to become the first spacecraft to visit Uranus (January 1986) and Neptune (August 1989).  Following the Neptune encounter, both spacecraft started a new phase of exploration under the intriguing title of the Voyager Interstellar Mission.

Five instruments continue to collect important measurements of magnetic fields, plasmas, and charged particles as both spacecraft explore different portions of the solar system beyond the orbits of the planets.  Voyager 1 is now more than 118 astronomical units (one AU is equal to the average orbital distance of Earth from the Sun) distant from the sun, traveling at a speed (relative to the sun) of 17.1 kilometers per second (10.6 miles per second).  Voyager 2 is now more than 96 AU from the sun, traveling at a speed of 15.5 kilometers per second (9.6 miles per second).  Both spacecraft are moving considerably faster than Pioneers 10 and 11, two earlier spacecraft that became the first robotic visitors to fly past Jupiter and Saturn in the mid-70s.

This processed color image of Jupiter was produced in 1990 by the U.S. Geological Survey from a Voyager image captured in 1979. The colors have been enhanced to bring out detail. Zones of light-colored, ascending clouds alternate with bands of dark, descending clouds. The clouds travel around the planet in alternating eastward and westward belts at speeds of up to 540 kilometers per hour. Tremendous storms as big as Earthly continents surge around the planet. The Great Red Spot (oval shape toward the lower-left) is an enormous anticyclonic storm that drifts along its belt, eventually circling the entire planet.

As seen in the night sky at Earth, Voyager 1 is within the confines of the constellation Ophiuchus, only slightly above the celestial equator; no telescope can see it, but radio contact is expected to be maintained for at least the next ten years.  Voyager 2 is within the bounds of the constellation Telescopium (which somehow sounds quite appropriate) in the far southern night sky.

Both spacecraft have already passed something called the Termination Shock † (December 2004 for V1, August 2007 for V2), where the solar wind slows as it starts to interact with the particles and fields present between the stars.  It is expected that both spacecraft will encounter the Heliopause, where the solar wind ceases as true interstellar space begins, from 10 to 20 years after crossing the Termination Shock.  Theories exist for what should be present in interstellar space, but the Voyagers will become the first man-made objects to go beyond the influences of the Sun, hopefully returning the first measurements of what it is like out there.  Each spacecraft is carrying a metal record with encoded sounds and sights from Earth, along with the needle needed to read the recordings, and simplified instructions for where the spacecraft came from, in case they are eventually discovered by intelligent extra-terrestrials.

Keep track of the Voyager spacecraft on the official  Voyager Interstellar Mission website or follow  @NASAVoyager2 on Twitter.    † The sun ejects a continuous stream of charged particles (electrons, protons, etc) that is collectively termed the solar wind.  The particles are traveling extremely fast and are dense enough to form a very tenuous atmosphere; the heliosphere represents the volume of space where the effects of the solar wind dominate over those of particles in interstellar space.  The solar wind particles are moving very much faster than the local speed of sound represented by their low volume density.  When the particles begin to interact with interstellar particles and fields (the interaction can be either physically running into other particles or experiencing an electromagnetic force resulting from a charged particle moving within a magnetic field), then they start to slow down.  The point at which they become subsonic (rather than their normal hypersonic speed) is the Termination Shock.

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NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft finally phones home after 5 months of no contact

On Saturday, April 5, Voyager 1 finally "phoned home" and updated its NASA operating team about its health.

NASA's interstellar explorer Voyager 1 is finally communicating with ground control in an understandable way again. On Saturday (April 20), Voyager 1 updated ground control about its health status for the first time in 5 months. While the Voyager 1 spacecraft still isn't sending valid science data back to Earth, it is now returning usable information about the health and operating status of its onboard engineering systems. 

Thirty-five years after its launch in 1977, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space . It was followed out of our cosmic quarters by its space-faring sibling, Voyager 2 , six years later in 2018. Voyager 2, thankfully, is still operational and communicating well with Earth. 

The two spacecraft remain the only human-made objects exploring space beyond the influence of the sun. However, on Nov. 14, 2023, after 11 years of exploring interstellar space and while sitting a staggering 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, Voyager 1's binary code — computer language composed of 0s and 1s that it uses to communicate with its flight team at NASA — stopped making sense.

Related: We finally know why NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped communicating — scientists are working on a fix

In March, NASA's Voyager 1 operating team sent a digital "poke" to the spacecraft, prompting its flight data subsystem (FDS) to send a full memory readout back home.

This memory dump revealed to scientists and engineers that the "glitch" is the result of a corrupted code contained on a single chip representing around 3% of the FDS memory. The loss of this code rendered Voyager 1's science and engineering data unusable.

The NASA team can't physically repair or replace this chip, of course, but what they can do is remotely place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. Though no single section of the memory is large enough to hold this code entirely, the team can slice it into sections and store these chunks separately. To do this, they will also have to adjust the relevant storage sections to ensure the addition of this corrupted code won't cause those areas to stop operating individually, or working together as a whole. In addition to this, NASA staff will also have to ensure any references to the corrupted code's location are updated.

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—  Voyager 2: An iconic spacecraft that's still exploring 45 years on

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On April 18, 2024, the team began sending the code to its new location in the FDS memory. This was a painstaking process, as a radio signal takes 22.5 hours to traverse the distance between Earth and Voyager 1, and it then takes another 22.5 hours to get a signal back from the craft. 

By Saturday (April 20), however, the team confirmed their modification had worked. For the first time in five months, the scientists were able to communicate with Voyager 1 and check its health. Over the next few weeks, the team will work on adjusting the rest of the FDS software and aim to recover the regions of the system that are responsible for packaging and returning vital science data from beyond the limits of the solar system.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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• Robb62 'V'ger must contact the creator. Reply
• Holy HannaH! Couldn't help but think that "repair" sounded extremely similar to the mechanics of DNA and the evolution of life. Reply
• Torbjorn Larsson *Applause* indeed, thanks to the Voyager teams for the hard work! Reply
• SpaceSpinner I notice that the article says that it has been in space for 35 years. Either I have gone back in time 10 years, or their AI is off by 10 years. V-*ger has been captured! Reply

Admin said: On Saturday, April 5, Voyager 1 finally "phoned home" and updated its NASA operating team about its health. The interstellar explorer is back in touch after five months of sending back nonsense data. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft finally phones home after 5 months of no contact : Read more

evw said: I'm incredibly grateful for the persistence and dedication of the Voyagers' teams and for the amazing accomplishments that have kept these two spacecrafts operational so many years beyond their expected lifetimes. V-1 was launched when I was 25 years young; I was nearly delirious with joy. Exploring the physical universe captivated my attention while I was in elementary school and has kept me mesmerized since. I'm very emotional writing this note, thinking about what amounts to a miracle of technology and longevity in my eyes. BRAVO!!! THANK YOU EVERYONE PAST & PRESENT!!!

• EBairead I presume it's Fortran. Well done all. Reply

SpaceSpinner said: I notice that the article says that it has been in space for 35 years. Either I have gone back in time 10 years, or their AI is off by 10 years. V-*ger has been captured!

EBairead said: I presume it's Fortran. Well done all.

• View All 13 Comments

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NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012.

After some inventive sleuthing, the mission team can — for the first time in five months — check the health and status of the most distant human-made object in existence.

For the first time since November , NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth.

After receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1 for the first time in five months, members of the Voyager flight team celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

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During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. Launched over 46 years ago , the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

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Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

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Things are finally looking up for the Voyager 1 interstellar spacecraft

Two of the four science instruments aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft are now returning usable data after months of transmitting only gibberish, NASA scientists have announced.

I was once sitting with my father while Googling how far away various things in the solar system are from Earth. He was looking for exact numbers, and very obviously grew more invested with each new figure I shouted out. I was thrilled. The moon? On average, 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) away. The James Webb Space Telescope ? Bump that up to about a million miles (1,609,344 km) away. The sun? 93 million miles (149,668,992 km) away.  Neptune ? 2.8  billion  miles (4.5 billion km) away. "Well, wait until you hear about Voyager 1," I eventually said, assuming he was aware of what was coming. He was not.

"NASA's  Voyager 1  interstellar spacecraft actually isn't even in the solar system anymore," I announced. "Nope, it's more than 15 billion miles (24 billion km)  away from us  — and it's getting even farther as we speak." I can't quite remember his response, but I do indeed recall an expression of sheer disbelief. There were immediate inquiries about how that's even physically possible. There were bewildered laughs, different ways of saying "wow," and mostly, there was a contagious sense of awe. And just like that, a new Voyager 1 fan was born.

It is easy to see why Voyager 1 is among the most beloved robotic space explorers we have — and it is thus easy to understand why so many people felt a pang to their hearts several months ago, when Voyager 1 stopped talking to us.

Related:  After months of sending gibberish to NASA, Voyager 1 is finally making sense again

For reasons unknown at the time, this spacecraft began sending back gibberish in place of the neatly organized and data-rich 0's and 1's it had been providing since its  launch in 1977 . It was this classic computer language which allowed Voyager 1 to converse with its creators while earning the title of "farthest human made object." It's how the spacecraft relayed vital insight that led to the discovery of new Jovian moons and, thanks to this sort of binary podcast, scientists incredibly identified a new ring of Saturn and created the solar system's first and only "family portrait." This code, in essence, is crucial to Voyager 1's very being.

Plus, to make matters worse, the issue behind the glitch turned out to be associated with the craft's Flight Data System, which is literally the system that transmits information about Voyager 1's health so scientists can correct any issues that arise. Issues like this one. Furthermore, because of the spacecraft's immense distance from its operators on Earth, it takes about 22.5 hours for a transmission to reach the spacecraft, and then 22.5 hours to receive a transmission back. Alas, things weren't looking good for a while — for about five months, to be precise.

But then, on April 20, Voyager 1  finally phoned home  with legible 0's and legible 1's.

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"The team had gathered early on a weekend morning to see whether telemetry would return," Bob Rasmussen, a member of the Voyager flight team, told Space.com. "It was nice to have everyone assembled in one place like this to share in the moment of learning that our efforts had been successful. Our cheer was both for the intrepid spacecraft and for the comradery that enabled its recovery."

And  then,  on May 22 , Voyager scientists released the welcome announcement that the spacecraft has successfully resumed returning science data from two of its four instruments, the plasma wave subsystem and magnetometer instrument. They're now working on getting the other two, the cosmic ray subsystem and low energy charged particle instrument, back online as well. Though there technically are six other instruments onboard Voyager, those had been out of commission for some time.

The comeback

Rasmussen was actually a member of the Voyager team in the 1970s, having worked on the project as a computer engineer before leaving for other missions including  Cassini , which launched the spacecraft that taught us almost everything we currently know about Saturn. In 2022, however, he returned to Voyager because of a separate dilemma with the mission — and has remained on the team ever since.

"There are many of the original people who were there when Voyager launched, or even before, who were part of both the flight team and the science team," Linda Spilker, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory , who also worked on the Voyager mission, told Space.com in the This Week from Space podcast on the TWiT network. "It's a real tribute to Voyager — the longevity not only of the spacecraft, but of the people on the team."

To get Voyager 1 back online, in rather cinematic fashion, the team devised a complex workaround that prompted the FDS to send a copy of its memory back to Earth. Within that memory readout, operators managed to discover the crux of the problem — a corrupted code spanning a single chip — which was then remedied through another (honestly,  super interesting ) process to modify the code. On the day Voyager 1 finally spoke again, "you could have heard a pin drop in the room," Spilker said. "It was very silent. Everybody's looking at the screen, waiting and watching." 

Of course, Spilker also brought in some peanuts for the team to munch on — but not just any peanuts. Lucky peanuts. 

It's a longstanding tradition at JPL to have a peanut feast before major mission events like launches, milestones and, well, the possible resurrection of Voyager 1. It  began  in the 1960s, when the agency was trying to launch the Ranger 7 mission that was meant to take pictures of and collect data about the moon's surface. Rangers 1 through 6 had all failed, so Ranger 7 was a big deal. As such, the mission's trajectory engineer, Dick Wallace, brought lots of peanuts for the team to nibble on and relax. Sure enough, Ranger 7 was a success and, as Wallace once said, "the rest is history." 

Voyager 1 needed some of those positive snacky vibes. 

"It'd been five months since we'd had any information," Spilker explained. So, in this room of silence besides peanut-eating-noises, Voyager 1 operators sat at their respective system screens, waiting. 

"All of a sudden it started to populate — the data," Spilker said. That's when the programmers who had been staring at those screens in anticipation leapt out of their seats and began to cheer: "They were the happiest people in the room, I think, and there was just a sense of joy that we had Voyager 1 back."

Eventually, Rasmussen says the team was able to conclude that the failure probably occurred due to a combination of aging and radiation damage by which energetic particles in space bombarded the craft. This is also why he believes it wouldn't be terribly surprising to see a similar failure occur in the future, seeing as Voyager 1 is still roaming beyond the distant boundaries of our stellar neighborhood just like its spacecraft twin,  Voyager 2 .

To be sure, the spacecraft isn't fully fixed yet — but it's lovely to know things are finally looking up, especially with the recent news that some of its science instruments are back on track. And, at the very least, Rasmussen assures that nothing the team has learned so far has been alarming. "We're confident that we understand the problem well," he said, "and we remain optimistic about getting everything back to normal — but we also expect this won't be the last."

In fact, as Rasmussen explains, Voyager 1 operators first became optimistic about the situation just after the root cause of the glitch had been determined with certainty. He also emphasizes that the team's spirits were never down. "We knew from indirect evidence that we had a spacecraft that was mostly healthy," he said. "Saying goodbye was not on our minds."

"Rather," he continued, "we wanted to push toward a solution as quickly as possible so other matters on board that had been neglected for months could be addressed. We're now calmly moving toward that goal."

The future of Voyager's voyage

It can't be ignored that, over the last few months, there has been an air of anxiety and fear across the public sphere that Voyager 1 was slowly moving toward sending us its final 0 and final 1. Headlines all over the internet, one written by  myself included , have carried clear, negative weight. I think it's because even if Voyager 2 could technically carry the interstellar torch post-Voyager 1, the prospect of losing Voyager 1 felt like the prospect of losing a piece of history. 

"We've crossed this boundary called the heliopause," Spilker explained of the Voyagers. "Voyager 1 crossed this boundary in 2012; Voyager 2 crossed it in 2018 — and, since that time, were the first spacecraft ever to make direct measurements of the interstellar medium." That medium basically refers to material that fills the space between stars. In this case, that's the space between other stars and our sun, which, though we don't always think of it as one, is simply another star in the universe. A drop in the cosmic ocean.

"JPL started building the two Voyager spacecraft in 1972," Spilker explained. "For context, that was only three years after we had the first human walk on the moon — and the reason we started that early is that we had this rare alignment of the planets that happens once every  176 years ." It was this alignment that could promise the spacecraft checkpoints across the solar system, including at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Those checkpoints were important for the Voyagers in particular. Alongside planetary visits come gravity assists, and gravity assists can help fling stuff within the solar system — and, now we know, beyond.

As the first humanmade object to leave the solar system, as a relic of America's early space program, and as a testament to how robust even decades-old technology can be, Voyager 1 has carved out the kind of legacy usually reserved for remarkable things lost to time.

"Our scientists are eager to see what they’ve been missing," Rasmussen remarked. "Everyone on the team is self-motivated by their commitment to this unique and important project. That's where the real pressure comes from." 

Still, in terms of energy, the team's approach has been clinical and determined. 

— NASA's Voyager 1 sends readable message to Earth after 4 nail-biting months of gibberish

— NASA engineers discover why Voyager 1 is sending a stream of gibberish from outside our solar system

— NASA's Voyager 1 probe hasn't 'spoken' in 3 months and needs a 'miracle' to save it

"No one was ever especially excited or depressed," he said. "We're confident that we can get back to business as usual soon, but we also know that we're dealing with an aging spacecraft that is bound to have trouble again in the future. That's just a fact of life on this mission, so not worth getting worked up about."

Nonetheless, I imagine it's always a delight for Voyager 1's engineers to remember this robotic explorer occupies curious minds around the globe. (Including my dad's mind now, thanks to me and Google.)

As Rasmussen puts it: "It's wonderful to know how much the world appreciates this mission."

Originally posted on Space.com .

Monisha Ravisetti is Space.com's Astronomy Editor. She covers black holes, star explosions, gravitational waves, exoplanet discoveries and other enigmas hidden across the fabric of space and time. Previously, she was a science writer at CNET, and before that, reported for The Academic Times. Prior to becoming a writer, she was an immunology researcher at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She graduated from New York University in 2018 with a B.A. in philosophy, physics and chemistry. She spends too much time playing online chess. Her favorite planet is Earth.

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The Fate of Voyager: Where Will NASA’s Iconic Space Probe Be in a Billion Years?

Within a billion years, NASA’s Voyager 1 probe will have made it to the opposite side of the Milky Way disk relative to the Sun. By the time it arrives, the Sun will have boiled off all the oceans on Earth, making it inhabitable. As a result, NASA might not be around to celebrate this remarkable milestone in the journey of one of its most iconic spacecraft.

Last month, I asked my brilliant undergraduate student at Harvard, Shokhruz Kakharov where the Voyager 1 spacecraft will be in a billion years. By using a detailed model for the mass distribution of the Milky Way galaxy, Shokhruz was able to plot the future orbit of Voyager relative to the Sun over billions of years. The results will be featured in a forthcoming peer-reviewed paper.

This may all sound academic and not anchored “down to Earth,” as the adults in the room often pretend to be. But the reason for my question was down to Earth. In fact, I wondered about this question because most stars formed billions of years before the Sun. Therefore, if Voyager’s-like rocketry was used on exoplanets more than a billion years ago, then the corresponding space probes might have reached the Solar system by now from anywhere within the Milky Way disk. We can observe these interstellar objects with our telescopes as they pass near Earth.

In particular, pairing an Earth-based telescope with the space-based Webb telescope, a million miles away, will allow us to localize precisely the trajectory of the objects and detect any non-gravitational acceleration that they display. It would also be extremely sensitive to the detection of trailing gases either as a result of cometary evaporation of natural ices or exhaust gases out of an engine. But even with no surrounding gas, the Webb telescope can measure the surface temperature and size of the objects based on the infrared flux that they emit. This would allow us to determine their reflectance of sunlight within the Earth-Sun separation as long as they are much bigger than Voyager.

However, on the size scale of Voyager, there is not enough sunlight reflected for our telescopes to detect these objects unless they arrive near Earth. Better still – if they were to collide with Earth, they would show up as interstellar meteors of unusual material strength and composition. Our next expedition to the site of the interstellar meteor, IM1, which collided with Earth on January 8, 2014 , and exhibited unusual material strength and composition , aims to find large pieces of that object and infer its origin.

Shokhruz and I calculated the Galactic orbits of all 5 probes launched so far by NASA to interstellar space, namely: Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and New Horizons . We also calculated the past trajectories of the two interstellar meteors, IM1 and IM2 , as well as the interstellar object `Oumuamua and the interstellar comet Borisov .

The fundamental question of whether any of the interstellar objects detected near Earth is artificial in origin will be better answered as more of them are discovered. The most promising path for increasing the current sample of interstellar objects is with the Rubin Observatory in Chile which within a year will survey the Southern sky every 4 days with a 3.2-billion-pixel camera that just arrived a week ago at the observatory . With its unprecedented sensitivity, the Rubin Observatory might find an interstellar object every few months. With my postdoc, Richard Cloete, we are developing the software needed to analyze the Rubin data. By tracing the orbits of interstellar objects and observing them with other telescopes, we hope to identify their likely origin and figure out the nature of the environment that gave birth to them.

For the same reasons that humans might not be around on Earth when Voyager arrives at the opposite side of the Milky Way, the senders of any interstellar probes may not be around on their exoplanet because of the evolution of their older star when we receive these packages in our mailbox near Earth. Even if these technological objects stopped functioning a long while ago, their existence would imply that there used to be other intelligent residents of the Milky Way. Their trash is our treasure. Learning about their state of mind from what they left behind is equivalent to studying ancient civilizations on Earth that do not exist anymore based on the relics we recover in archaeological sites.

In a recent public appearance, I was asked what I envision for humanity’s future. I explained that humans arrogantly believe that they are important actors on the cosmic stage. But the truth is that even on the provincial stage of Earth, life survived huge catastrophes long before humans came to the scene, including a global warming event 252 million years ago that wiped out 96% of all marine species.

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This gives hope that, in the grand scheme of things, life on Earth will also survive the environmental catastrophes triggered by humans. Another way to put it is that microbes are more resilient than humans. In a billion years, human existence might be a minor footnote on the cosmic playbook. To get a more balanced perspective, we must search for other actors on the cosmic stage and learn from them.  And if none of them survived, we can study their history based on the artifacts they left behind.

We are not in a position to claim a major role in cosmic history. But the good news is that we can figure out what happened on the cosmic stage and find pleasure in the fact that our own Voyager will reach the other side of the Milky Way relative to the Sun in a billion years. Isn’t this accomplishment breathtaking?

Yes, we are short-lived, meter-scale creatures with major physical limitations, but we are so ambitious and fearless that we can send our message in a bottle to the other side of the Milky Way, 50 thousand light-years away, within a billion years.

Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s – Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011-2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “ Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth ” and a co-author of the textbook “ Life in the Cosmos ”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “ Interstellar ,” was published in August 2023.

May 30, 2024

Voyager 1’s Revival Offers Inspiration for Everyone on Earth

Instruments may fail, but humanity’s most distant sentinel will keep exploring, and inspiring us all

By Saswato R. Das

Artist's rendering of a Voyager spacecraft in deep space.

Dotted Zebra/Alamy Stock Photo

Amid April’s litany of bad news—war in Gaza, protests on American campuses, an impasse in Ukraine—a little uplift came for science buffs.

NASA has reestablished touch with Voyager 1 , the most distant thing built by our species, now hurtling through interstellar space far beyond the orbit of Pluto. The extraordinarily durable spacecraft had stopped transmitting data in November, but NASA engineers managed a very clever work-around, and it is sending data again. Now more than 15 billion miles away, Voyager 1 is the farthest human object, and continues to speed away from us at approximately 38,000 miles per hour.

Like an old car that continues to run, or an uncle blessed with an uncommonly long life, the robotic spacecraft is a super ager that goes on and on—and, in doing so, has captivated space buffs everywhere.

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Launched on September 5, 1977, the one-ton Voyager 1 was meant to chart the outer solar system, in particular the gas giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, and Saturn’s moon, Titan. Its twin, Voyager 2 , launched the same year, followed a different trajectory with a slightly different mission to explore the outer planets before heading to the solar system’s edge.

Those were NASA’s glory days. A few years earlier, NASA had successfully landed men on the moon—and won the space race for the U.S. NASA’s engineers were the envy of the world.

To get to Jupiter and Saturn, both Voyagers had to traverse the asteroid belt, which is full of rocks and debris orbiting the sun. They had to survive cosmic rays, intense radiation from Jupiter and other perils of space. But the two spacecraft made it without a hitch.

President Jimmy Carter held office when Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral; Elvis Presley had died just three weeks before; gas was about 60 cents a gallon; and, like now, the Middle East was in crisis, with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat trying to find peace.

Voyager 1 sent back spectacular photos of Jupiter and its giant red spot. It showed how dynamic the Jovian atmosphere was, with clouds and storms. It also took pictures of Jupiter’s moon Io, with its volcanoes, and Saturn’s moon Titan , which astronomers think has an atmosphere similar to the primordial Earth’s. The spacecraft discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and two new Jovian moons, which were named Thebe and Metis. On reaching Saturn, it discovered five new moons as well as a new ring.

And then Voyager 1 continued on its journey and sent images back from the edge of the solar system. Many of us remember the Pale Blue Dot , a haunting picture of the Earth it took on Feb 14, 1990, when it was a distance of 3.7 billion miles from the sun. The astronomer Carl Sagan wrote:

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

By then Voyager 1 had long outlived its planetary mission but kept faithfully calling home as it traveled beyond the solar system into the realm of the stars. By 2012 Voyager 1 had reached the heliosphere , the farthest edge of the solar system. There, it penetrated the heliopause, where the solar wind ends, stopped by particles coming from the interstellar medium, the vast space between the stars. (Astronomers know that the space between the stars is not totally empty but permeated by a rarefied gas .)

From Voyager 1, scientists learned that the heliopause is quite dynamic and first measured the magnetic field of the Milky Way beyond the solar system. And its instruments kept sending data as it traveled through the interstellar medium.

On hearing that Voyager 1 had gone dark, I had checked in with Louis Lanzerotti , a former Bell Labs planetary scientist who did the calibrations for the Voyager 1 spacecraft and was a principal investigator on many experiments. He told me that a NASA manager in the 1970s had doubted that the spacecraft’s mechanical scan platform, which pointed instruments at targets, and very thin solid state detectors, which took those edge of the solar system readings, on the spacecraft would survive. They not only survived but worked flawlessly for all this time, Lanzerotti said, providing excellent data for decades. He was overjoyed on hearing the news that Voyager 1 was still alive.

Voyager 1 instruments have power until 2025 . After that, they will shut off, one by one. But there is nothing to stop the spacecraft as it speeds away from us in the vast emptiness of space.

Thousands of years from now, maybe when the human race has left this planet, Voyager 1, the tiny little spacecraft that could, will still continue its inexorable journey to the stars.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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NASA is keeping Voyager 2 going until at least 2026 by tapping into backup power

Emma Bowman

Artist's concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft. After the Voyager 1 and its replica Voyager 2 launched in 1977, their power sources are slowly dying. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

Artist's concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft. After the Voyager 1 and its replica Voyager 2 launched in 1977, their power sources are slowly dying.

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, which has been probing the outer bounds of the solar system for over 45 years, is running out of power. But a new plan aims to keep its interstellar mission alive for at least three more years.

The Voyager 2, first launched in 1977, has been helping scientists investigate faraway planets and understand how the heliosphere — the sun's outermost atmospheric bubble-like layer that traps particles and magnetic fields — protects Earth from its volatile interstellar environment.

With Voyager 2's power supply dwindling, NASA was about to shut down one of its five science instruments onboard the spacecraft. To keep it going, engineers had already sacrificed heaters and other nonessential parts that drained power. But engineers have now found a way to tap reserve power from a safety mechanism that regulates the spacecraft's voltage.

These are the 4 astronauts who'll take a trip around the moon next year

"The move will enable the mission to postpone shutting down a science instrument until 2026, rather than this year," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this past week.

Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1 (launched the same year), are the only spacecraft to have ventured beyond the heliosphere.

Ed Stone, who was the chief scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab before he retired last year, has spent over half his life dedicated to the Voyager program. He oversaw the spacecrafts churn out one discovery after another as they explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

"What it revealed was how complex and dynamic the solar system really is. Before Voyager, the only known active volcanoes were here on Earth," Stone told NPR in 2017 . "Then we flew by Jupiter's moon, Io, and it has 10 times the volcanic activity of earth. Before Voyager, the only known oceans in the solar system were here on Earth. Then we flew by another moon of Jupiter, Europa, which it turns out has a liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust."

Voyager 2 is 12.3 billion miles away from Earth and counting . Voyager 1, also facing an expiration date as it also loses power, is 14.7 billion miles away.

"The science data that the Voyagers are returning gets more valuable the farther away from the Sun they go, so we are definitely interested in keeping as many science instruments operating as long as possible," Linda Spilker, the Voyager program's project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab, said in a statement.

NASA, meanwhile, has been working to make sure the Voyagers' legacy doesn't end with a slow fizzle, with officials weighing expensive and complex proposals from several groups for a new, long-term probe.

Voyager 1 and 2: The Interstellar Mission

An image of Neptune taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

NASA has beautiful photos of every planet in our solar system. We even have images of faraway Neptune , as you can see in the photo above.

Neptune is much too distant for an astronaut to travel there with a camera. So, how do we have pictures from distant locations in our solar system? Our photographers were two spacecraft, called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2!

An artist’s rendering of one of the Voyager spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft launched from Earth in 1977. Their mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn —and beyond to the outer planets of our solar system. This was a big task. No human-made object had ever attempted a journey like that before.

The two spacecraft took tens of thousands of pictures of Jupiter and Saturn and their moons. The pictures from Voyager 1 and 2 allowed us to see lots of things for the first time. For example, they captured detailed photos of Jupiter's clouds and storms, and the structure of Saturn's rings .

Image of storms on Jupiter taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Image credit: NASA

Voyager 1 and 2 also discovered active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io , and much more. Voyager 2 also took pictures of Uranus and Neptune. Together, the Voyager missions discovered 22 moons.

Since then, these spacecraft have continued to travel farther away from us. Voyager 1 and 2 are now so far away that they are in interstellar space —the region between the stars. No other spacecraft have ever flown this far away.

Where will Voyager go next?

Watch this video to find out what's beyond our solar system!

Both spacecraft are still sending information back to Earth. This data will help us learn about conditions in the distant solar system and interstellar space.

The Voyagers have enough fuel and power to operate until 2025 and beyond. Sometime after this they will not be able to communicate with Earth anymore. Unless something stops them, they will continue to travel on and on, passing other stars after many thousands of years.

Each Voyager spacecraft also carries a message. Both spacecraft carry a golden record with scenes and sounds from Earth. The records also contain music and greetings in different languages. So, if intelligent life ever find these spacecraft, they may learn something about Earth and us as well!

A photo of the golden record that was sent into space on both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

More about our universe!

Where does interstellar space begin?

Searching for other planets like ours

Play Galactic Explorer!

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NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills.

The deep space mission that changed everything.

In 1979, Alan Cummings, a scientist working on NASA’s unprecedented Voyager mission, entered a Caltech room in Pasadena, California, and saw an unusual, alien world projected on a screen.

The brand-new image, just beamed back from space, revealed a place like no other ever seen. It was a moon teeming with vibrant volcanoes. Cummings, a cosmic-ray physicist at Caltech - the research university that manages the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - couldn’t believe his eyes.

“I thought the Caltech students had pulled a prank,” Cummings told Mashable. “But no, it was real.”

It was Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanic place in our solar system. It was nothing like our pale moon, a barren surface beaten into fine dust by countless impacts. On Io, volcanoes erupted. Lava flowed. It was  alive .

“It gives me chills, even just now,” Cummings, who started working on the Voyager mission 51 years ago, said.

The two Voyager craft, both launched in 1977, were built to last five years. They’re now approaching 50 years of operation, and are respectively over 15 and 12 billion miles away. They’ve left behind the influence of our star and entered interstellar space. “These are the only spacecraft that have been there,” Cummings marveled. Decades later, the craft and their antiquated computers have each encountered a number of glitches - which have been repeatedly remedied by a clever group of devoted Voyager engineers.

The latest hurdle, however, could be serious. NASA reported that engineers were still working to fix a stubborn problem the agency identified in December: They can send messages to Voyager 1, but “no science or engineering data is being sent back to Earth.” There’s an issue with a critical onboard computer, the flight data system. The space agency more recently received a memory “readout” from Voyager 1 (at such a great distance, it takes nearly a day for a message from the craft to reach us), which the team is now scrutinizing for hints of a solution. The prolonged issue has space onlookers worried.

“It gives me chills, even just now.”

Indeed, the Voyager craft have continually persevered. But their power is finite. In the coming few years or so, NASA may need to turn off more instruments to preserve dwindling nuclear fuel. Eventually, perhaps in the mid-2030s, communication will cease. But these robotic explorers have forever altered Cummings’ view - and our own - of what’s out there.

The Voyager missions changed our view of deep space

The Voyager missions, originally conceived to explore Jupiter and Saturn, have vastly exceeded their original two-planet itinerary. For Cummings and some of his Voyager colleagues, that was always the plan. After all, the craft are nuclear-powered; they wouldn’t run out of fuel for decades.

“The biggest problem was getting it past the launchpad,” the physicist said, recalling a number of failed launches. “A lot of us had a goal of getting to interstellar space.”

Soon after launching, both craft made good time to Jupiter, venturing by the gas giant in 1979. They revealed the planet like never before. Scientists saw Jupiter’s roiling atmosphere, with vibrant belts of clouds traveling in alternate directions and teeming with giant storms - some bigger than Earth.

“We were shocked and amazed,” Cummings said.

But the Jovian moons were stars of the show, too. Besides volcano-blanketed Io, the mission captured views of ice-clad Europa, with giant cracks crisscrossing the surface. Intrigued planetary scientists have continued to investigate Europa, and now suspect a briny ocean - reaching some 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) down - sloshes beneath that icy surface. Another NASA probe, bound for Europa, will soon depart Earth.

“We were shocked and amazed.”

Both Voyagers then continued to majestic Saturn. The craft spied astounding detail in the rings, discovered moons, and found that the moon Titan harbors a thick atmosphere, and possibly seas of methane. Years later, researchers can’t stay away. NASA will send a car-sized craft, fitted with eight spinning rotors, to the Saturnian moon in 2028, a mission called Dragonfly. It will land on Titan’s ice-covered dunes, an environment that might have resembled early Earth.

At this juncture, the Voyager craft took disparate paths through the solar system. Voyager 1 continued toward the far reaches of our cosmic neighborhood, while Voyager 2 would first make historic swoops by Uranus and Neptune - the “ice giants.” Again, the moons were stars.

For the first time, scientists like Cummings saw Uranus’ icy, grooved moon Miranda. It had been walloped by something. “It looked like the Death Star,” he said, referencing the moon-sized space station in Star Wars. And then there was Neptune’s bizarre moon Triton, a world some 3 billion miles away. Voyager 2 detected extreme surface temperatures of minus 391 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 235 degrees Celsius) on this frozen realm. Even so, the moon still shot out miles-high plumes of icy material from geysers.

“It’s so amazing we saw all this activity on cold moons,” Cummings said.

The Voyager craft, however, weren’t nearly finished. After all, it was only 1989.

On Feb. 14, 1990, NASA engineers planned to turn off Voyager 1’s cameras to conserve power. The flybys of glorious worlds had ended, and the journey into the farthest reaches of our solar system had begun. But the space agency captured one final group of shots, a “family portrait” of the faraway planets that Voyager left in the dust. Included is a view called the “Pale Blue Dot”; it’s a look back home, from some 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) away.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us,” wrote the famed cosmologist Carl Sagan.

The Voyager craft would press on, surviving perpetual cold and enduring the hazard of galactic cosmic rays - energetic particles created by powerful events in the cosmos, like the explosion of stars.

Both craft have now entered interstellar space, the region between stars. They’ve traveled beyond the protective balloon of particles and magnetic fields generated by the sun, and have collected unprecedented information about the radiation in an uncharted realm of space (though Voyager 1 isn’t currently sending back this information). “The science data that the Voyagers are returning gets more valuable the farther away from the Sun they go, so we are definitely interested in keeping as many science instruments operating as long as possible,” Linda Spilker, Voyager's project scientist, said last year.

Cummings hopes the remaining instruments can stay online for another few years or so, at least until the mission reaches the half-century mark. Yet even when both spacecraft run out of power, the greater mission won’t be over. In fact, the longest part of its expedition, as a spacefaring messenger, will commence.

The Voyager craft carry “a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials,” NASA explains. “The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.” Included on the album is Chuck Berry’s scintillating single, “Johnny B. Goode.”

Out in the vast emptiness of space, the craft certainly aren’t likely to be smashed by anything. They’ll keep going, and going. I asked Cummings if the mission might just keep journeying in perpetuity, for perhaps billions of years.

“It will,” he said.

Written By: Mark Kaufman.

This article was originally published on Mashable SE Asia.

The post NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills. appeared first on The Amazing Times .

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The Voyager 1 spacecraft has a big glitch. Now, NASA must figure out how to fix it

The Voyager 1 space probe is the farthest human-made object in space. It launched in 1977 with a golden record on board that carried assorted...

The Voyager 1 space probe is the farthest human-made object in space. It launched in 1977 with a golden record on board that carried assorted sounds of our home planet: greetings in many different languages, dogs barking, and the sound of two people kissing, to name but a few examples. The idea with this record was that someday, Voyager 1 might be our emissary to alien life – an audible time capsule of Earth's beings. Since its launch, it also managed to complete missions to Jupiter and Saturn. In 2012, it crossed into interstellar space.

But a few months ago, the probe encountered a problem. "It's an elderly spacecraft," says NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce , "and it had some kind of electronic stroke." Greenfieldboyce talks to Short Wave Host Regina G. Barber about the precarious status of Voyager 1 – the glitch threatening its mission, and the increasingly risky measures NASA is taking to try and restore it.

What interstellar adventure should we cover next? Email the show at [email protected] .

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify , Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts .

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave .

This episode was produced by Margaret Cirino and edited by Geoff Brumfiel. Gilly Moon was the audio engineer.

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China lands a spacecraft on the moon’s far side to collect rocks for study

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, technical personnel work at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC) in Beijing, Sunday, June 2, 2024. A Chinese spacecraft landed on the far side of the moon Sunday to collect soil and rock samples that could provide insights into differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side. (Jin Liwang/Xinhua via AP)

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BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese spacecraft landed on the far side of the moon Sunday to collect soil and rock samples that could provide insights into differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side.

The landing module touched down at 6:23 a.m. Beijing time in a huge crater known as the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the China National Space Administration said.

The mission is the sixth in the Chang’e moon exploration program, which is named after a Chinese moon goddess. It is the second designed to bring back samples, following the Chang’e 5 , which did so from the near side in 2020.

The moon program is part of a growing rivalry with the U.S. — still the leader in space exploration — and others, including Japan and India. China has put its own space station in orbit and regularly sends crews there.

The emerging global power aims to put a person on the moon before 2030, which would make it the second nation after the United States to do so. America is planning to land astronauts on the moon again — for the first time in more than 50 years — though NASA pushed the target date back to 2026 earlier this year.

U.S. efforts to use private-sector rockets to launch spacecraft have been repeatedly delayed. Last-minute computer trouble nixed the planned launch of Boeing’s first astronaut flight Saturday.

Earlier Saturday, a Japanese billionaire called off his plan to orbit the moon because of uncertainty over the development of a mega rocket by SpaceX. NASA is planning to use the rocket to send its astronauts to the moon.

In China’s current mission, the lander is to use a mechanical arm and a drill to gather up to 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of surface and underground material over about two days.

An ascender atop the lander will then take the samples in a metal vacuum container back to another module that is orbiting the moon. The container will be transferred to a reentry capsule that is due to return to Earth in the deserts of China’s Inner Mongolia region about June 25.

Missions to the moon’s far side are more difficult because it doesn’t face the Earth, requiring a relay satellite to maintain communications. The terrain is also more rugged, with fewer flat areas to land.

The South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater created more than 4 billion years ago, is 13 kilometers (8 miles) deep and has a diameter of 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles), according to a report by China’s Xinhua News Agency.

It is the oldest and largest of such craters on the moon, so may provide the earliest information about it, Xinhua said, adding that the huge impact may have ejected materials from deep below the surface.

Boeing Starliner launch livestream: Watch as NASA sends 2 astronauts to ISS

Update: The Starliner spacecraft launched at 10:52 a.m. ET Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

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Two Voyager Spacecraft Still Going Strong After 20 Years

Twenty years after their launch and long after their planetary reconnaissance flybys were completed, both Voyager spacecraft are now gaining on another milestone -- crossing that invisible boundary that separates our solar system from interstellar space, the heliopause.

Since 1989, when Voyager 2 encountered Neptune, both spacecraft have been studying the environment of space in the outer solar system. Science instruments on both spacecraft are sensing signals that scientists believe are coming from the heliopause -- the outer most edge of the Sun's magnetic field that the spacecraft must pass through before they reach interstellar space.

"During their first two decades the Voyager spacecraft have had an unequaled journey of discovery. Today, even though Voyager 1 is now more than twice as far from the Sun as Neptune, their journey is only half over and more unique opportunities for discovery await the spacecraft as they head toward interstellar space," said Dr. Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist and director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. "The Voyagers owe their ability to operate at such great distances from the Sun to their nuclear electric power sources, which provide the electrical power they need to function."

The Voyagers owe their ability to operate at such great distances from the Sun to their nuclear electric power sources, which provide the electrical power they need to function.

Dr. Edward Stone

Voyager Project Scientist

The Sun emits a steady flow of electrically charged particles called the solar wind. As the solar wind expands supersonically into space, it creates a magnetized bubble around the Sun, called the heliosphere. Eventually, the solar wind encounters the electrically charged particles and magnetic field in the interstellar gas. The boundary created between the solar wind and interstellar gas is the heliopause. Before the spacecraft reach the heliopause, they will pass through the termination shock -- the zone in which the solar wind abruptly slows down from supersonic to subsonic speed.

Reaching the termination shock and heliopause will be major milestones for the spacecraft because no one has been there before and the Voyagers will gather the first direct evidence of their structure. Encountering the termination shock and heliopause has been a long-sought goal for many space physicists, and exactly where these two boundaries are located and what they are like still remains a mystery.

"Based on current data from the Voyager cosmic ray subsystem, we are predicting the termination shock to be in the range of 62 to 90 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. Most 'consensus' estimates are currently converging on about 85 AU. Voyager 1 is currently at about 67 AU and moving outwards at 3.5 AU per year, so I would expect crossing the termination shock sometime before the end of 2003," said Dr. Alan Cummings, a co- investigator on the cosmic ray subsystem at the California Institute of Technology.

"Based on a radio emission event detected by the Voyager 1 and 2 plasma wave instruments in 1992, we estimate that the heliopause is located at 110 to 160 AU from the Sun," said Dr. Donald A. Gurnett, principal investigator on the plasma wave subsystem at the University of Iowa. (One AU is equal to 150 million kilometers, or 93 million miles, or the distance from the Earth to the Sun.)

"The low-energy charged particle instruments on the two spacecraft continue to detect ions and electrons accelerated at the Sun and at huge shock waves, tens of AU in radius, that are driven outward through the solar wind. During the past five years, we have observed marked variations in this ion population, but have yet to see clear evidence of the termination shock. We should always keep in mind that our theories may be incomplete and the shock may be a lot farther out than we think," said Dr. Stamatios M. Krimigis, principal investigator for the low energy charged particle subsystem at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Voyager 2 was launched first on Aug. 20, 1977 and Voyager 1 was launched a few weeks later on a faster trajectory on Sept. 5. Initially both spacecraft were only supposed to explore two planets -- Jupiter and Saturn. But the incredible success of those two first encounters and the good health of the spacecraft prompted NASA to extend Voyager 2's mission on to Uranus and Neptune. As the spacecraft flew across the solar system, remote-control reprogramming has given the Voyagers greater capabilities than they possessed when they left the Earth.

There are four other science instruments that are still functioning and collecting data as part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission. The plasma subsystem measures the protons in the solar wind. "Our instrument has recently observed a slow, year-long increase in the speed of the solar wind which peaked in late 1996, and we are now observing a slow decrease in solar wind velocity," said Dr. John Richardson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, principal investigator on the plasma subsystem. "We think the velocity peak coincided with the recent solar minimum. As we approach the solar maximum in 2000 the solar wind pressure should decrease, which will result in the termination shock and heliopause moving inward towards the Voyager spacecraft."

The magnetometer on board the Voyagers measures the magnetic fields that are carried out into interplanetary space by the solar wind. The Voyagers are currently measuring the weakest interplanetary magnetic fields ever detected and those magnetic fields being measured are responsive to charged particles that cannot be detected directly by any other instruments on the spacecraft, according to Dr. Norman Ness, principal investigator on the magnetometer subsystem at the Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware.

Other science instruments still collecting data include the planetary radio astronomy subsystem and the ultraviolet spectrometer subsystem.

Voyager 1 encountered Jupiter on March 5, 1979, and Saturn on November 12, 1980 and then, because its trajectory was designed to fly close to Saturn's large moon Titan, Voyager 1's path was bent northward by Saturn's gravity, sending the spacecraft out of the ecliptic plane, the plane in which all the planets except Pluto orbit the Sun. Voyager 2 arrived at Jupiter on July 9, 1979, and Saturn on August 25, 1981, and was then sent on to Uranus on January 25, 1986 and Neptune on August 25, 1989. Neptune's gravity bent Voyager 2's path southward, sending it out of the ecliptic plane as well and on toward interstellar space.

Both spacecraft have enough electrical power and attitude control propellant to continue operating until about 2020, when the available electrical power will no longer support science instrument operation. Spacecraft electrical power is supplied by Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) that provided approximately 470 watts power at launch. Due to the natural radioactive decay of the plutonium fuel source, the electrical energy provided by the RTGs is continually declining. At the beginning of 1997, the power generated by Voyager 1 had dropped to 334 watts and to 336 watts for Voyager 2. Both of these power levels represent better performance than had been predicted before launch.

The Voyagers are now so far from home that it takes nine hours for a radio signal traveling at the speed of light to reach the spacecraft. Science data are returned to Earth in real-time to the 34-meter Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas located in California, Australia and Spain. Voyager 1 will pass the Pioneer 10 spacecraft in January 1998 to become the most distant human- made object in our solar system.

Voyager 1 is currently 10.1 billion kilometers (6.3 billion miles) from Earth, having traveled 11.9 billion kilometers (7.4 billion miles) since its launch. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is departing the solar system at a speed of 17.4 kilometers per second (39,000 miles per hour).

Voyager 2 is currently 7.9 billion kilometers (4.9 billion miles) from Earth, having traveled 11.3 billion kilometers (6.9 billion miles) since its launch. The Voyager 2 spacecraft is departing the solar system at a speed of 15.9 kilometers per second (35,000 miles per hour).

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Voyager Interstellar Mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D. C.