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Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says the Voyager spacecraft are powered by a couple of nuclear reactors sitting on the back of the probe, but they will soon run out of steam. At this rate, Dodd says, Voyager should have enough power to communicate with Earth until or maybe The fact that Voyager is still sending back data today is a feat in itself.
When the Voyager probes were launched in , no one thought they would still be in operation today. The missions were initially set up to get a better idea of the geography of Jupiter and Saturn, but the researchers in control of the mission didn't want to stop there.
Dodd and the rest of the team have extended Voyager's life using the few improvised tactics they have available to them. The scientists turned off Voyager 1's cameras in to conserve energy but not before they turned Voyager back toward home to take the Pale Blue Dot photo.
Last fall, they turned off the heaters on the backup thrusters. This means that the backup fuel lines will eventually freeze. It's a risk the team was willing to take to extend the viability of the primary thrusters. Dodd thinks that in , the team will probably have to turn off the gyros responsible for maneuvering the probe, and its movements will be left to the whims of deep space.
Voyager 1 also has a few built-in fail-safe devices to keep it talking to Earth. It assumes its receiver failed. Still, hearing from the explorers will grow more difficult. A team of scientists have calculated how long it would take four operating spacecraft to reach the nearest star. The researchers compared the predicted paths of four spacecraft to the paths of nearby stars, as measured by the Gaia space telescope, to see where and when they might overlap.
According to their work , posted to the online pre-print server arXiv, it would take about 90, years for Pioneer 10 to swing within striking distance of a nearby star.
Related Stories. Jennifer Leman Jennifer Leman is a science journalist and news editor at Popular Mechanics, where she writes and edits stories about science and space. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. Brilliant engineering and careful power regulation means despite being 10 billion miles away Voyager 2 can contact NASA using only tiny amounts of electrical power — roughly equivalent to that generated by a cheap LED wristwatch.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are each equipped with six sets, or pairs, of thrusters to control the pitch, yaw and roll motions of the spacecraft. These include three pairs of primary thrusters and three backup, or redundant, pairs. Both spacecraft are now using all three sets of their backup thrusters. As Voyager 2 powers its backup thrusters and continues on its journey into the unknown, both craft are entering the final stages of their lives as functioning spacecraft, capable of relaying information back to Earth.
However, when launched in , each spacecraft carried a gold-plated audio-visual disc containing photos of the Earth, scientific information and greetings spoken from people from around the world. By that time, Voyager 1 will be In about 40, years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1. The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.
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