NASA has reached the depths of the universe. Something surprising happened

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Voyager-1 is 25 billion kilometers away from Earth

47 years after the launch of Voyager 1, the space probe has moved almost 25 billion kilometers away from Earth. It is powered by plutonium, the supply of which is slowly running out and only 4 on-board instruments are still working, which is amazing considering that the probe is exposed to temperatures lower than originally expected.

Recently, NASA engineers commanded Voyager 1 to turn on the heater to give its onboard instruments a bit of a thermal “massage” – the operation failed because Voyager reported low power. When this happens, automatic safety systems disconnect any modules not considered mission critical.

However, an error occurred earlier in Voyager 1 because the probe is equipped with two types of antennas (X-band and S-band), and the X-band antenna was considered non-critical and had a disconnected transmitter, which meant that engineers were unable to communicate with Voyager using Deep Space Network. However, thanks to the intervention of NASA specialists, communication with Voyager was restored, which still has 4 functional instruments for measuring charged particles, cosmic rays, magnetic fields and plasma waves.

Currently, Voyager 1 is outside the Kuiper belt, but it loses 4 watts of energy per year as plutonium stored on board decays. Still, surviving half a century is still an amazing achievement.