The probes were launched almost half a century ago after engineers took advantage of a rare alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which happens once every 176 years. Planetary scientist Linda Spilker, who started working on the Voyager missions before they launched, told Scientific American: 'If everything goes really well, maybe we can get the missions extended into the 2030s. Two years ago scientists expected to have to start switched off instruments on the probes, but as yet nothing has been turned off since 2008. They have certainly surprised NASA engineers before. 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.' 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.
It means it takes two days for engineers to send a message to the spacecraft and get a response.īoth 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. 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.
They have spent the best part of half a century travelling farther from Earth than any other man-made objects.īut the two Voyager spacecraft are now entering their final phase, with NASA eyeing a potential timeline for their powering-down.