Requiem for Voyager

As the American curators of a NASA project called the Voyager program recently reported, the 46-year-old interplanetary probe Voyager 1 has been silent for several months, which does not bode well. The device suffered an emergency that was bound to happen sooner or later: a failure occurred in one of the computers, which made it impossible for it to send research data to the flight control center. It looks like the probe has now turned into space junk.

Revolutionary mission with high-profile discoveries

So, the uncrewed robotic Voyager 1, the most distant man-made object from Earth, has not sent relevant signals to Houston since November. Its loss will mark the end of decades of scientific breakthroughs and mark the end of a space mega-mission.



Launched in 1977, it was initially intended for a 4-year mission to Jupiter and Saturn, in addition to the earlier missions of the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 probes. As a result, the planned tasks were successfully completed. A number of important discoveries were made, including new information about the so-called great red spot of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, as well as the many natural satellites around them.

As you know, Voyager 1 is only half of the project. This messenger has a cosmic twin, Voyager 2, which also explored Uranus and Neptune, which in 1989 became the only spacecraft to explore the 4 outer planets.

Kolobok probes

It is only at first glance that it seems easy for a spacecraft to jump from planet to planet. In fact, Voyager's mission to these celestial bodies was made possible by a rare planetary arrangement that occurs once every 175 years. This made it possible to visit all 4, skillfully using the gravity of each planet, progressively and sequentially moving from the previous orbit to the next (the probes did not land on the surface).

After Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 set its sights on the depths of space, using a camera to capture the phenomena it encountered along the way. Voyager 2 had its own program for exploring the Universe, which it began to implement after leaving the solar system.

A photograph of a pale blue dot, which captured the Earth from a distance of more than 14 billion km on February 1990, 6, flew around the world. However, only on August 25, 2012, data obtained from the Voyager 1 apparatus indicated that it entered interstellar space, that is, left the heliosphere. Voyager 2 left it in November 2018.

"Voyager Boom"

For many Americans, the probes became a symbol of the era. This topic sounded cool in the eighties. Some eccentrics got tattoos of Voyager on their bodies, others named their newborn sons after it. Thanks to the implementation of this unique program, an unprecedented interest in space arose in the West. It can only be compared with the popularity of the lunar rover in the USSR in the early seventies.

The twin probes left a significant mark on pop culture, inspiring David Livingston to create the intelligent blockbuster Season 6 of the Star Trek: Voyager media project. They are also mentioned in the television series The X-Files and The West Wing.

Even when more advanced probes were later launched, they could not eclipse the fame and glory of Voyager.

"Houston-Houston, I'm in trouble!"

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft of their kind, but they have almost the same design, which gives scientists some chance of resuscitating Voyager 1. Why? The fact is that on July 21 last year, Voyager 2, being at a distance of 19,9 billion km from Earth, encountered a similar problem: the connection between it and the ground-based antennas of the DSN deep space network was lost. As a result, the data sent from the device did not reach the DSN, and it, in turn, stopped receiving commands from ground controllers.

The cause of the emergency situation was the erroneous deviation of the antenna by 2^о in relation to the Earth. And by a lucky coincidence, it was fixed within a few days - the on-board system resumed operation as before. So, on August 1, a weak carrier signal was discovered, and already on August 4, the antenna was successfully reoriented, although this was originally supposed to be done in October, during the next communication session.

True, there are several “buts” in the current story. First, before shutting down, Voyager 1 was studying an anomalous disturbance of the magnetic field and plasma particles in interstellar space, and this is a more serious reason for the failure, which complicates the problem. Secondly, quite a lot of time has already passed since the failure, which reduces the chances of a successful restart. Finally, it assumes that the antenna of a technologically outdated probe receives a stable signal, undistorted by interference, that has traveled an extremely long distance. Indeed, for radio exchange, due to the heterogeneous density of outer space, it takes from 37 to 45 hours.

The resource is not infinite

Today, the memory storage of a household smartphone is hundreds of thousands of times greater than the capacity of the Voyager computer, and its radio transmitter is comparable in power to a refrigerator light bulb. NASA calculated: nuclear generators Both spacecraft are expected to stop in 2025.

But even if the development of this interstellar program is close to completion, the idle journey by human standards will continue forever until the body of the device becomes a victim of some space object.

If Voyagers ever find themselves in the hands of intelligent beings from an alternative civilization, they will be able to familiarize themselves with the corresponding message from earthlings. Each of them has a gilded gramophone record with many audio recordings and images that give an idea of ​​the properties, characteristics of humanity and life on our planet in general.


As of November 25, 2023, Voyager 1 was moving at a speed of 61 thousand 200 km/h or 17 km/s at a distance of 24,2 billion km from Earth. Voyager 2, respectively, had a speed of 55 thousand 300 km/h or 15 km/s and was at a distance of 20,2 billion km from Earth. Thus, Voyager 1 and its twin, each located 40 thousand light years from the nearest star, will hang out in the Universe indefinitely.