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When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it would be able to do what it was built to do and take close-up images of Jupiter and Saturn. She did that and much more.
Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, demonstrating along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be compressed into a single pixel in a photograph, a “Pale blue dot,” as astronomer Carl Sagan called it. He extended a four-year mission to the present day, embarking on the deepest journey into space ever made.
Now, you may have said goodbye to that distant point for good.
traveler 1, the most distant man-made space object, has not sent coherent data to Earth since November. NASA has been trying to diagnose what Voyager mission project manager Suzanne Dodd called the “most serious problem” the robotic probe has faced since taking on the job in 2010.
The spacecraft encountered a flaw in one of its computers that eliminated its ability to send engineering and science data to Earth.
The loss of Voyager 1 would cap decades of scientific advances and signal the beginning of the end of a mission that has shaped humanity’s farthest ambition and inspired generations to look to the sky.
“Scientifically, it’s a big loss,” Dodd said. “I think, emotionally, maybe it’s an even bigger loss.”
Voyager 1 is half of the Voyager mission. It has a twin spacecraft, Voyager 2.
Launched in 1977, they were primarily built for a four-year voyage to Jupiter and Saturnexpanding the previous flybys of the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes.
The Voyager mission took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets (once every 175 years), allowing the probes to visit all four.
Using each planet’s gravity, the Voyager spacecraft could move on to the next, according to nasa.
The mission of Jupiter and Saturn It was a success.
The flybys of the 1980s produced several new discoveries, including new insights into Jupiter’s so-called great red spot, the rings around Saturn, and the numerous moons of each planet.
Voyager 2 also explored Uranus and Neptunebecoming in 1989 the only spacecraft to explore the four outer planets.
Meanwhile, Voyager 1 had set a course for deep space, using its camera to photograph the planets it was passing along the way. Voyager 2 would later begin its own journey into deep space.
“Anyone who is interested in space is interested in the things that Voyager discovered about the outer planets and their moons,” said Kate Howells, public education specialist at the Planetary Society, an organization co-founded by Dr. Sagan to promote space. space exploration.
“But I think the pale blue dot was one of those most poetic and moving things,” he added.
On Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1, traveling 3.7 billion miles from the sun toward the outer reaches of the solar system, turned around and took a photograph of the Earth that Dr. Sagan and others understood to be a humble self-portrait of humanity.
“It is known around the world and connects humanity to the stars,” Ms. Dodd said of the mission.
He added: “Many, many people have come up to me and said, ‘Wow, I love Voyager.’ It’s what excited me about the space. It’s what made me think about our place here on Earth and what that means.’”
Howells, 35, is among those people.
About 10 years ago, to celebrate the start of his space career, Howells spent his first Planetary Society paycheck to get a Voyager tattoo.
Although the spaceships “all look the same,” she said, more people recognize the tattoo than she anticipated.
“I think that speaks to how famous Voyager is,” he said.
The Voyagers left their mark on popular cultureinspiring a very clever “Voyager 6” in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and references about “The x-files” and “The West Wing.”
Even as more advanced probes were launched from Earth, Voyager 1 continued to reliably enrich our understanding of space.
In 2012, it became the first man-made object to leave the heliosphere, the space around the solar system directly influenced by the sun. There is a technical debate among scientists about whether Voyager 1 actually left the solar system, but it still went interstellar, traversing the space between stars.
This charted a new path for heliophysics, which analyzes how the sun influences the space around it. In 2018, Voyager 2 followed his twin among the stars
Before Voyager 1, scientific data about the Sun’s gases and material came only from the far reaches of the heliosphere, according to Dr. Jamie Rankin, deputy Voyager project scientist.
“And now we can for the first time connect vision from the inside out to the outside in,” Dr. Rankin said. “That’s a big part,” he added. “But the other half is simply that much of this material cannot be measured any other way than by sending a spacecraft.”
Voyager 1 and 2 are the only spacecraft of this type. Before going offline, Voyager 1 had been studying an anomalous disturbance in the magnetic field and plasma particles in interstellar space.
“There is nothing else being launched to go to market,” Dodd said. “That’s why we’re taking the time and being careful trying to recover this spacecraft, because the science is so valuable.”
But recovery means getting under the hood of an aging spacecraft more than 15 billion miles away, equipped with the technology of yesteryear. It takes 45 hours to exchange information with the ship.
It has been repeated over the years that a smartphone has hundreds of thousands of times the memory of Voyager 1 and that the radio transmitter emits as many watts as a refrigerator light bulb.
“There was an analogy: It’s like trying to figure out where the cursor is on your laptop screen when your laptop screen isn’t working,” Ms. Dodd said.
His team still has hope, he said, especially as the tantalizing 50th anniversary of the launch approaches in 2027. Voyager 1 has survived technical failures before, though none as serious.
Voyager 2 is still operational, but aging. He has faced his own technical difficulties also.
NASA had already estimated that the nuclear propulsion generators on both spacecraft would likely die around 2025.
Even if the Voyager interstellar mission is nearing its end, the journey still has a long way to go.
Arguably, Voyager 1 and its twin, each 40,000 years away from the next closest star, will remain on an indefinite mission.
“If at some point in its distant future Voyager encountered beings from some other civilization in space, it would carry a message,” Dr. Sagan said. he said in a 1980 interview.
Each spacecraft carries a gold-plated phonograph record loaded with a variety of sound recordings and images depicting the richness of humanity, its diverse cultures, and life on Earth.
“A gift across the cosmic ocean from one island of civilization to another,” said Dr. Sagan.