You must log in or # to comment.
Despite being almost a half-century old and flying through the incredibly cold, radiation-saturated depths of space at the edge of the solar system, it still continues to function and NASA is determined that it will continue to do so until its nuclear power source finally gives out in the next year or so.
This is sad. I know nothing lasts forever, but only one more year? 😢
Look on the bright side of how many extra years we got from them already! Really wish we could launch new ones. It’s such amazing science
I agree. But Veeger is the OG.
That said, do you think we could build something like this again that would last for almost 50 years?
~They don’t make them like they used to to.~
I mean, we could do it again. There’s kind of no reason not to, we could put more advanced instruments on them, we could send larger probes with more instruments, more experiments longer lived power sources…
Well, I said there’s no reason, but actually there are a few reasons we aren’t doing it currently. First, everything costs money, NASA’s budget keeps getting cut, and we have other important missions already planned. I certainly don’t want any new projects to jeopardise missions like dragonfly for instance. Also, we’re running out of available nuclear fuels… I believe the Voyager probes used plutonium 238 for their RTGs, but we have these nuclear proliferation treaties with Russia and long story short, we haven’t been making that stuff for the last 70 years and there’s not much left.
We certainly make plenty that will stand the test of time still. It’s just we also mass produce junk now. We haven’t forgotten the science of making things that last. I guarantee NASA could if they had the money and freedom.
I guarantee NASA could if they had the money and freedom.
And therein lies the rub.
Although with some technologies, NASA has already fully closed down the projects and so would be starting from notes for the next round, having to figure out the implementation all over again.
Thankfully in the case of the Voyager program, there’s still a skeleton of it that’s fully operational, so replicating it would be astronomically simpler.
It’s that very last one that concerns me. It feels like the drive that got us to the moon, and put Voyager out there deep into the cosmos, is nearing gone for one reason or another.
It’s because stupidity is winning.
The most pressing problem we have in the world right now is stupidity.
NASA could absolutely build a probe that would last 500 years in space, traveling at 40 km/s or more, for a few billion.
We could make a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that wold last centuries or even millennia. The RTG would need to be quite large for that, but it’s entirely doable and not inordinately expensive. Curiosity has been active for over 13 years and that’s exposed to Martian atmosphere and weather. That being said, it would take thousands of years to reach the nearest star and there’s no telling what sort of propulsion systems will be available even a few decades from now. That hypothetical probe would likely be overtaken by much fast man made objects before long.
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but it sounds like you’re saying we shouldn’t merely because we might have better tech in the future?
That, to me, is a bleak and defeatist mentality that will only hold us back from achieving greater things. Who knows what we could learn before we create better tech? What if we learned how to build the better tech on the back of what we build today? In fact, isn’t that what drives innovation (i.e. iteration)?
~At this point, I’m not suggesting you’re wrong, but merely verbalizing a concern of mine.~
It’s been over a decade since I learned this, so my memory is fuzzy, but I recall that for at least the first several decades of space exploration propulsion technology was advancing at a fast enough rate that it was a real consideration to wait on a mission for better tech.
If a probe launched now would take five years to reach its destination, but propulsion speeds are on track to double in two years, it would make more sense to wait the two years, use more advanced sensor/communication/etc. tech that developed during that time, then still have the new probe arrive before the first would.
I haven’t paid a lot of attention, but I’m guessing the tech is no longer advancing that quickly, so the thought process may not hold as much water, but it’s rooted in practical thoughts. And couldn’t you say it’s rather defeatist to assume that better tech won’t develop, and optimistic to believe that it may?
Yeah, we should be yeeting probes throughout and out of the solar system to learn as much as we can. If the probes of today are overtaken by the probes of tomorrow, that’s just a bonus, and should be cause for celebration.
We did. It is called New Horizons. But it looks like it’s going to get cut next year anyway.
But it looks like it’s going to get cut next year anyway.
Oh no. :(
By “approaching” they mean in about a year. Still very cool but I thought it’d be sooner based on the headline
Time is relative, friend!
I was 6-yo, don’t remember watching the launch, but I remember something of the hype. Fucking amazing.
You would think after all these years and miles that enough dust would have ablated something to failure, cosmic rays would have flipped enough bits to strangle the logic, something, but it rolls on.
Fun fact: now that the probes are in interstellar space, they are finding that the universe is full of ……stuff.
For example, voyager 2, back around May, hit a weird pocket of, they think, plasma. Possibly built up on the edge of the heliosphere like a ship displaces water, or possibly a huge cloud. It changed the course of the probe. So that’s fun and alarming!
https://blog.sciandnature.com/2025/05/voyager-2-just-turned-back-and-confirms.html?m=1
Also when they crossed the heliopause (the “boundary” between the magnetic sphere our solar system is in, and interstellar space), they hit a termination shock multiple times each, meaning the heliosphere probably expands and contracts. Neat! Unfortunately we only have two data points so no idea if it’s the same everywhere. And the heliopause, it turns out, is thousands of degrees (30,000-50,000 kelvin), but there are so few particles out there, despite the solar wind pushing stuff away from the sun, that only the sensors picked up the high particle energy, no significant heat transfer happened. Probably why they haven’t suffered failures from ablation, there’s just not much out there.
Edit to add:
Apparently a faint signal was detected from near where voyager 1 is now, earlier this month, and it was a weird planned transmission TO voyager, like a ping! Holy shit that’s neat!
https://www.ecoportal.net/en/voyager-1-receives-ghostly-signal-nasa/14167/
And another edit for funsies because I found an article from 1993 about the first evidence of the heliopause 15 years after launch, and I think that’s just swell.
Ty for that uplifting comment!
Great. Only 1459 more lightdays to go to reach the next star.
So that would be a 70,000 year transfer, but if something meant to go fast like Project Daedalus actually happened in the late 70s, it would be sneaking up on Bernard’s Star right about now.
Getting close!
That distance is mind boggling
Dark was the night, cold was the ground.
Damn ain’t it all beautiful.
