The Voyager 1 and Voayager 2 space probes are two man -made machines that travel the furthest from Earth for space exploration. After nearly 45 years of operation, NASA is now beginning to shut down the system on both trials in final preparation before it stops operating according to a Scientific American report.
Both probes use plutonium fuel to operate. But every year it loses 4W of power due to running out of plutonium. Originally Voyager was launched just to do explorations to the planets Jupiter and Saturn with an operational life of only 4 years.
Among the iconic images that Voyager successfully sent back to earth is the "pale blue dot" picture. The Earth only looks like a tiny dot in vast outer space. From this picture scientist Carl Sagan wrote about how small we are on the scale of the galaxy.
But the Voyager brothers continued their journey exploring outer space until they passed the stellar space. Vogayer 1 is currently estimated to have traveled 23.27 billion kilometers from Earth as of last April. Only four of the instruments are still working while on the Voyager 2 five instruments are still working.
Voyager 1’s power resources are expected to run out as early as 2024. With NASA giving orders to turn off some instruments, they hope it can continue operations until 2030 and send adventure information back to Earth.
After it is no longer operational, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 will continue the mini on behalf of the earth. Both carry a 12 ″-diameter gold disc that has audio recordings of the earth, songs and the location of the earth in case it is discovered by aliens in the future.