5 min read
0 comments
NASA faces a critical challenge! After nearly 50 years, the iconic Voyager 1 and 2 probes are running out of power, forcing drastic cuts to keep them alive.
The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, launched by NASA in 1977, are in a race against time.
With more than four decades of mission, these two spacecraft are facing a critical problem: the shortage of plutonium, the energy source that powers their generators.
This fact puts at risk the future of these probes, which represent historic milestones in space exploration.
- Amazon owner makes a pickup truck that has the size of a Strada and 'transforms' into an SUV
- Fiat Strada Endurance has a range of up to 14 km/l and a 40-day waiting list
- Volkswagen announces price reduction for the 2026 Nivus Sense! The bet is on cost-benefit in the compact SUV market
- Uber reaches agreement to increase safety for drivers and passengers
In a desperate move to extend their lifespans, NASA has begun shutting down essential instruments and taking drastic measures to try to keep these probes operational for a few more years.
On February 25, 2025, NASA announced that it had deactivated one of Voyager 1's key instruments, the cosmic ray subsystem.
This equipment, responsible for studying high-energy particles in interstellar space, was one of the last to operate on the probe, which is currently more than 23 billion kilometers from Earth.
The decision to turn it off was taken due to the drop in the probe's power, which now depends exclusively on energy generated by a small radioisotope generator, whose fuel (plutonium) is running out.
Voyager 1, which holds the title of the most distant man-made object from Earth, achieved a remarkable feat in 2020 by detecting for the first time how electrons from the Sun accelerate as they bounce off shock waves as they travel out of the solar system.
This discovery was a milestone in understanding the behavior of the solar wind, one of the great unknowns in astrophysics.
However, with the end of plutonium approaching, NASA had to make difficult decisions to preserve what was left of the mission.
The fight for survival of the Voyager probes
In the case of Voyager 2, another iconic probe, the same fate awaits.
NASA plans to turn off the instrument that measures low-energy charged particles on March 24, 2025.
While this measure is painful, it is seen as necessary to ensure that the probe's other instruments can continue to operate, albeit in a limited way.
The Voyager probes, in their original mission, were designed to explore the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn.
But as a result of the success of these missions, they were kept in operation for more than 40 years, making discoveries that exceeded the expectations of their engineers and scientists.
However, there is a major challenge to be faced: the fuel that keeps these instruments working, plutonium, runs out every year.
Every 12 months, the probes lose around 4 watts of power, and over time, the equipment stops working.
This results in an ever-decreasing number of operational instruments on both probes.
Currently, of the 10 scientific tools that were on board the Voyagers, only three remain in operation.
On each of the probes, these instruments are vital to continue collecting data from interstellar space.
For Voyager 1, the only functional instrument will be the magnetometer, which measures the magnetic field in the outer regions of the solar system.
Voyager 2 still has the cosmic ray subsystem, which should continue operating until 2026.
However, the situation is dramatic: the future of the mission depends on the ability to control energy consumption, even with increasingly evident limitations.
Vanishing instruments: the end of the Voyager probe era
As the final failure of plutonium generators approaches, NASA has adopted an “energy-saving” strategy.
To ensure that the work of both probes does not come to a premature end, the space agency has been progressively turning off several instruments and systems.
In 2024, Voyager 1 experienced a significant failure in its internal memory, resulting in six months of complete silence.
However, thanks to a bold software update, the NASA team was able to restore communication with the probe, allowing it to transmit data again.
However, not all failures have been easily resolved.
In September 2024, it was necessary to activate Voyager 1's secondary thrusters to correct its orientation, after a blockage in the main engines, a result of the advanced age of the probe's systems.
Although this action was risky and challenging, the success of the procedure ensured that the mission would continue, at least for a while longer.
The engineering behind the Voyager missions, which already seems like a story of overcoming and perseverance, continues to write surprising chapters.
Mission to 2030: Hope until the end
According to a statement by Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, NASA expects the probes to continue operating until at least 2030.
However, this horizon is far from guaranteed.
With fewer and fewer instruments in operation, the probe will gradually lose the ability to transmit scientific data effectively.
Nevertheless, the NASA relies on constant modifications and adjustments made to the probes to extend the probes' operating time as much as possible.
In addition to their original mission, which aimed to explore Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyagers have played a fundamental role in collecting information about the heliopause — the region where the solar wind loses its influence and gives way to the environment of interstellar space.
This area represents one of the most unknown fronts in astrophysics, and probes have been, to date, the only instruments capable of providing reliable data about this region of space.
The probes' last major contribution was sending information about the interaction between the Sun's magnetic field and interstellar space, helping the scientific community to better understand the behavior of the solar wind, cosmic particles and magnetic fields in distant regions of our solar system.
Maintaining these probes, even with increasingly limited resources, has been one of NASA's greatest space engineering victories.
