NASA’s Voyager 1 Probe Is in Trouble

NASA’s Voyager 1 probe departed Earth almost 47 years ago, and now it may be nearing the end of its life.

Voyager 1, recognizable in photos and artistic renderings by its iconic radio dish and long antennae, was launched in 1977 to study the solar system and interstellar space. On August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 exited the solar system’s heliosphere—the region around the sun where its solar winds are strongest—and officially left the solar system to begin its voyage in interstellar space. According to NASA, the probe is currently over 162 astronomical units (AU), or 15 billion miles, from Earth, making it the most distant human-made object ever launched.

Now, Voyager’s communication system is failing, and scientists aren’t sure how much longer the probe will last.

Since last November, the probe has been sending garbled binary messages that don’t make any sense. “It basically stopped talking to us in a coherent manner,” Voyager 1’s project manager Suzanne Dodd told NPR. Dodd said the communication issue is a “serious problem.”

It’s no surprise to scientists that Voyager 1’s aging computer systems are reaching the end of their life. Astonishingly, NPR reports that the computing power of Voyager’s systems is less than that of a modern car’s key fob. “It’s remarkable that [the Voyager probes] keep flying, and that they’ve flown for 46-plus years,” Dodd said.

Scientists at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab are currently seeing if they can fix Voyager’s communication problem. However, the probe is only expected to last for another few years. After that, it will lifelessly coast through the interstellar medium.

Voyager 1 isn’t just a probe—it’s a symbol of hope

Voyager 1 famously carries a gold-plated record, which holds sounds from Earth, greetings from world leaders, and scientific information for any aliens who might one day encounter the probe. Chances of actual alien contact are pretty slim, but the probe and its payload have long been seen as a symbol of exploration and goodwill toward any neighbors we might have in the galaxy.

Voyager 1’s photos have become powerful symbols, too. The probe did flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s moon Titan before leaving the solar system. Its most famous photo, though, is the Pale Blue Dot that astronomer Carl Sagan masterminded. Voyager took that photo in 1990, when it turned its camera around to take one last photo of the Earth before its departure from the solar system. The Earth appears as a tiny speck in a yellow band of light.

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest,” Sagan wrote in his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot. “But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives …. every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Voyager 1, no matter how much longer it lasts, is a poignant reminder of the hopes and dreams all collected on that little mote of dust.

(via NPR, featured image: Voyager 1 and CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)