NASA To Shut Down 44-Year-Old Voyager Program Soon; Is The Spacecraft Dying?

NASA intends to shut down the Voyager spacecraft after four and a half decades.

The Voyager program of the United States Space Administration consists of two robotic interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.

According to The US Sun, NASA launched the two spacecraft from Cape Canaveral in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn.

The devices were only supposed to survive five years, yet they've been in deep space for over 45 years.

Since their launch, the probes have gone a staggering 14.46 billion kilometers from Earth, farther than any man-made object.

However, NASA recently stated that the Voyager program is closing since the two spacecraft are nearing the end of their mission.

Voyager 1 Passing Saturn — An artist's impression of NASA's Voyager 1 space probe passing behind the rings of Saturn, using cameras and radio equipment to measure how sunlight is affected as it shines between the ring particles. The image was produced in 1977, before the craft was launched, and depicts events due to take place in 1980. NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

NASA Eyes Shutting Down Voyager Probes

In an interview with Scientific American about shutting off the probes, NASA scientist Ralph McNutt said, "We're at 44 and a half years, so we've done 10 times the warranty on the darn things."

Both spacecraft are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which use the heat from decaying plutonium spheres to generate electricity, albeit the RTGs' output is falling by roughly four watts each year.

It implies that each instrument is switched off one by one.

Voyager 1 has just four operational instruments left, whereas Voyager 2 has five.

The plutonium that powers the spacecraft will undoubtedly deteriorate past the point where it can keep the probes operational. Some predict it will happen as soon as 2025, while others believe it will happen later.

ALSO READ : NASA JPL Says Voyager 1 Spacecraft Seem to Be Mysteriously Confused With Data

However, they have so far shocked NASA engineers, who had anticipated to begin shutting off Voyager 2's equipment one by one beginning in 2020. But since 2008, nothing has been turned off.

Linda Spilker, who started working on the Voyager missions before they launched, spoke to Scientific American, too.

"If everything goes really well, maybe we can get the missions extended into the 2030s," she said.

Spilker, however, added that success depends on its power, which serves as its limiting point.

About Voyager 1, 2 Probe

Voyager 1 took 36 years to cross the heliopause, and the data it has returned since then has revealed some intriguing aspects about the significance of magnetic fields in the cosmos, Sky News reported.

Voyager 2 then entered interstellar space in 2018, 41 years after its launch, bursting through the heliopause's outer limit, where the hot solar wind collides with the cool interstellar medium.

However, space is vast, and neither of the probes is presently thought to be outside the solar system. The Oort Cloud, a collection of tiny objects still subject to the gravity of the Sun, is thought to represent the last frontier.

Voyager 2 will take around 300 years to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, and maybe 30,000 years to get beyond it, according to NASA.

Voyager 1 is now 14.5 billion miles (23.3 billion kilometers) from Earth, and traveling that distance takes 20 light hours and 33 minutes, implying that sending a message to the spacecraft and receiving a response takes two days.

Voyager 2 isn't quite as far away, at about 12 billion miles from Earth and less than an hour's light distance.

Both spacecraft are equipped with a gold-plated disc with multicultural greetings, music, and images in case they encounter intelligent life. However some astronomers have warned that establishing initial contact may be a mistake.