Voyager 1 Nears the Edge: NASA Shuts Down Systems to Keep It Alive

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos
<v Speaker 1>with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a
<v Speaker 1>gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for
<v Speaker 1>unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries
<v Speaker 1>of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful
<v Speaker 1>slumber under the night sky.
<v Speaker 2>So imagine for a second that you're trying to troubleshoot
<v Speaker 2>and maintain this vintage nineteen seventies machine, like say, a
<v Speaker 2>classic car. But there's a catch, right, A pretty big
<v Speaker 2>catch in this case, Yeah, a massive one. The car
<v Speaker 2>is currently flying through absolute darkness, something like fifteen billion
<v Speaker 2>miles away from the mechanic, and on top of that,
<v Speaker 2>its battery is just, you know, slowly and permanently dying.
<v Speaker 3>It's a terrifying scenario if you're the mechanics exactly.
<v Speaker 2>But that is the literal reality for the team at
<v Speaker 2>NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, because on April seventeen, twenty twenty six,
<v Speaker 2>those engineers sent commands to shut down a major instrument,
<v Speaker 2>the Low Energy Charged Particles Experiment, or the LCP on
<v Speaker 2>the Voyager one spacecraft.
<v Speaker 3>Which I mean, nationally sounds like bad news, right when
<v Speaker 3>you hear they're turning.
<v Speaker 2>Things off, right, you think it's breaking. But our mission
<v Speaker 2>for this deep dive today is to really unpack why
<v Speaker 2>that isn't the case. We're getting into the sources today
<v Speaker 2>to show that this isn't just a story about a
<v Speaker 2>machine breaking down. It's it's actually this incredible story of survival.
<v Speaker 2>We're looking at these razor thin margins, the staggering physics
<v Speaker 2>of managing power in deep space, and you know what,
<v Speaker 2>this little probe that could is still whispering back to
<v Speaker 2>Earth from the interstellar void.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and I think it's important to set the tone
<v Speaker 3>right away. Voyager one launched on September five, nineteen seventy seven,
<v Speaker 3>so we're talking about a near forty nine year legacy here,
<v Speaker 3>which is just wild, it really is. And the key
<v Speaker 3>takeaway from the mission logs and the engineering briefs we've
<v Speaker 3>been reviewing is that shutting off the LECP is absolutely
<v Speaker 3>not a failure. It is a highly strategic, incredibly calculated
<v Speaker 3>maneuver to keep humanity's farthest outpost alive.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's like they're not just passively watching the lights
<v Speaker 2>go out.
<v Speaker 3>No, not at all.
<v Speaker 2>They're making this proactive choice. But before we even get
<v Speaker 2>into what the LCP is and why they turned it off,
<v Speaker 2>I feel like we need to talk about the how,
<v Speaker 2>because just turning off a switch that far away is
<v Speaker 2>a logistical nightmare.
<v Speaker 3>Oh completely. The sheer friction of trying to communicate with
<v Speaker 3>Voyager one right now is well, it's almost impossible to wrap.
<v Speaker 2>Your head around, right because it's over fifteen billion miles away,
<v Speaker 2>which is about twenty five billion kilometers, and.
<v Speaker 3>At that distance, even light, which is the absolute speed
<v Speaker 3>limit of the universe, it takes a long time to travel.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's not instantaneous. Like if I send a text
<v Speaker 2>message to a friend across the globe, it's basically instant
<v Speaker 2>But sending a text to Voyager it takes.
<v Speaker 3>Roughly twenty three hours just for the signal to reach
<v Speaker 3>the spacecraft twenty three hours, and then you have to
<v Speaker 3>wait another twenty three hours just for the confirmation ping
<v Speaker 3>to come back to Earth and say hey, I got
<v Speaker 3>the message.
<v Speaker 2>So wait, you send a command that is going to
<v Speaker 2>permanently alter this historic spacecraft, and then you just have
<v Speaker 2>to sit on your hands for almost two days waiting
<v Speaker 2>to see if it worked. I mean, how does a
<v Speaker 2>team even manage a procedure with that kind of lag?
<v Speaker 2>The psychological tension must be unbearable.
<v Speaker 3>It requires a level of operational discipline that is just
<v Speaker 3>it's unique to the Voyager interstellar mission. You can't just
<v Speaker 3>press a button. It involves the deep space network, right,
<v Speaker 3>these giant seventy meters antennas on Earth.
<v Speaker 2>Because the signal is so weak by the time it.
<v Speaker 3>Gets there exactly, they're pumping tens of kilowatts of power
<v Speaker 3>out of these massive dishes. But by the time that
<v Speaker 3>radio wave expands over fifteen billion miles, Voyagers catching a
<v Speaker 3>signal that's you know, a fraction of a billionth of
<v Speaker 3>a watt. Wow, And it gets crazier. Because the computer's
<v Speaker 3>on Voyager from the seventies, they have incredibly limited memory.
<v Speaker 2>Like less memory than a modern keyfob.
<v Speaker 3>Basically, yeah, so they aren't just sending an off command.
<v Speaker 3>They're doing this heavily choreographed digital surgery. They have to
<v Speaker 3>creatively reprogram these aging computers using sequential octal code, slotting
<v Speaker 3>it into specific memory addresses.
<v Speaker 2>Without messing up the core code that keeps the antenna
<v Speaker 2>pointed at Earth.
<v Speaker 3>Right, because if the antenna drifts, you lose the spacecraft forever.
<v Speaker 3>There's zero room for error and that specific LACP shut
<v Speaker 3>down sequence we're talking about. Once the command arrived, it
<v Speaker 3>took the spacecraft about three hours and fifteen minutes just
<v Speaker 3>to execute it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So that really paints a picture of how hard
<v Speaker 2>it is to just talk to this thing. But that
<v Speaker 2>leads us to the grim reality that actually forced them
<v Speaker 2>to send that command in the first place. The spacecraft
<v Speaker 2>is starving.
<v Speaker 3>Starving for power. Yes, this is the core engineering crisis
<v Speaker 3>of the whole mission.
<v Speaker 2>Right, and to understand that, we have to look at
<v Speaker 2>how it gets its power because it doesn't use solar panels. Right,
<v Speaker 2>the sun is way too far away.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, out there, the sun is just a slightly brighter
<v Speaker 3>star in the sky. So instead both voyagers are power
<v Speaker 3>b these things called RTGs radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, RTGs, how do those actually work?
<v Speaker 1>Well?
<v Speaker 3>They rely on the radioactive decay of plutonium two thirty
<v Speaker 3>eight inside these generators. As the plutonium naturally decays, it
<v Speaker 3>gives off a lot of heat, and the RTGs basically
<v Speaker 3>convert that heat directly into electricity. Using the temperature difference
<v Speaker 3>between the hot plutonium and the cold vacuum of space.
<v Speaker 2>It's just solid state physics, no moving parts, right.
<v Speaker 3>No moving parts to break down, which is why it's
<v Speaker 3>lasted almost fifty years. But here's the catch. Physics is relentless.
<v Speaker 3>The plutonium is literally decaying away, right.
<v Speaker 2>It's a finite resource.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly at launch in nineteen seventy seven, those RTGs provided
<v Speaker 3>about four hundred and seventy watts combined, but because of
<v Speaker 3>the natural half life of the plutonium, they lose about
<v Speaker 3>four watts of power every single.
<v Speaker 2>Year, four watts a year. I kind of visualize that like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, being stuck in this massive, freezing dark room
<v Speaker 2>and the only light bulb keeping you warm is just slowly,
<v Speaker 2>irreversibly dimming.
<v Speaker 3>That is a very accurate way to look at it,
<v Speaker 3>because by twenty twenty six, those power levels have gotten
<v Speaker 3>critically low.
<v Speaker 2>So if the margins are so razor thin, how do
<v Speaker 2>the engineers even decide what stays on? Like, how do
<v Speaker 2>you choose between keeping the spacecraft's brain warm and keeping
<v Speaker 2>its eyes open.
<v Speaker 3>It is a brutal process of triage. Every single watt
<v Speaker 3>is aggressively accounted for they have to balance the science operations,
<v Speaker 3>the instruments gathering data with the essential systems like the
<v Speaker 3>computer and the transmitter needed to beam that data back
<v Speaker 3>to Earth.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because if it can't transmit, what's the point.
<v Speaker 3>Right, But the real balancing act, the thing that dictates everything,
<v Speaker 3>is thermal managing it. Deep space is effectively absolute zero,
<v Speaker 3>and Voyager uses this propellant called hydrazine for its tiny
<v Speaker 3>thrusters to keep the antenna pointed at.
<v Speaker 2>Earth, and hydrozen can freeze.
<v Speaker 3>It freezes at roughly two degrees celsius. If the fuel
<v Speaker 3>lines get too cold, the hydrozene freeze is solid, the
<v Speaker 3>lines could rupture and the spacecraft loses the ability to
<v Speaker 3>point out Earth.
<v Speaker 2>Mission over Oh wow, So they literally have to use
<v Speaker 2>electricity just to run heaters on the fuel lines.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly, And over the decades they've deactivated every non essential heater.
<v Speaker 3>But eventually you run out of easy things to turn.
<v Speaker 2>Off, which brings us to the tipping point because that
<v Speaker 2>for wat annual drain. You know, it's a slow bleed,
<v Speaker 2>you can plan for that. But looking at the sources,
<v Speaker 2>there was actually a very sudden, specific catalyst that forced
<v Speaker 2>NASA's hand in April of twenty twenty six.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it wasn't just the gradual decay. On February twenty seventh,
<v Speaker 3>twenty twenty six, the spacecraft was performing this routine roll
<v Speaker 3>maneuver basically rotating to calibrate its instruments.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, a routine roll.
<v Speaker 3>What happened well, during that maneuver, there was an unexpected
<v Speaker 3>power dip. The voltage on the main electrical bus dropped,
<v Speaker 3>and that is incredibly dangerous because Voyager has this on
<v Speaker 3>board defense mechanism and Atomas fault protection system.
<v Speaker 2>It's kind of like a computer safe mode sort.
<v Speaker 3>Of, but way more aggressive. If the fault protection system
<v Speaker 3>senses that the spacecraft is growing more power than it has,
<v Speaker 3>you'll just blindly start shutting things down to save the
<v Speaker 3>core systems.
<v Speaker 2>And you desperately want to avoid triggering that, right because
<v Speaker 2>trying to reboot a forty nine year old operating system
<v Speaker 2>from scratch while it's in safe mode sounds terrifying.
<v Speaker 3>It is the absolute worst case scenario because if it
<v Speaker 3>shuts down the wrong heater autonomously and the fuel lines
<v Speaker 3>freeze before Earth even knows what happened.
<v Speaker 2>Because of the twenty three hour delay, exactly.
<v Speaker 3>By the time JPL gets the telemetry, the mission could
<v Speaker 3>already be dead, so the engineers had to intervene. The
<v Speaker 3>LACP shutdown was actually part of a pre planned sequence
<v Speaker 3>that they agreed on years ago. They knew this day
<v Speaker 3>was coming.
<v Speaker 2>So is proactive amputation like setting off an instrument early?
<v Speaker 2>Is that always safer than just letting the spacecraft's own
<v Speaker 2>defense mechanisms kick in?
<v Speaker 3>Without a doubt, It's all about buying precious time and
<v Speaker 3>maintaining control. By acting first and shutting down the LACP
<v Speaker 3>in a controlled, orderly manner, they lowered the overall power draw,
<v Speaker 3>stabilized the voltage, and kept the fault protection system from
<v Speaker 3>waking up.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so that's seven of the ten original instruments now
<v Speaker 2>turned off on Voyager one, right yep.
<v Speaker 3>Voyager two actually had its LCP deactivated earlier in March
<v Speaker 3>of twenty twenty five, and Voyager one lost this cosmic
<v Speaker 3>ray subsystem in February twenty twenty five.
<v Speaker 2>It really highlights the foresight of the engineering teams to
<v Speaker 2>have this exact sequence of prioritization mapped out years in advance.
<v Speaker 2>But I want to talk about the specific instrument that
<v Speaker 2>drew the short straw this time, because we're saying farewell
<v Speaker 2>to the LACP and it has this incredible legacy.
<v Speaker 3>It really does. The Low Energy Charged Particles Experiment has
<v Speaker 3>been running almost continuously since nineteen seventy seven.
<v Speaker 2>What was it actually doing out there?
<v Speaker 3>It measures ions, electrons and cosmic rays for decades. It
<v Speaker 3>was instrumental in mapping the outer layers of the heliosphere,
<v Speaker 3>which is the big protective bubble our Sun creates. It
<v Speaker 3>tracked how the solar wind from our Sun interacts with
<v Speaker 3>the plasma from interstellar space, and it actually proved that
<v Speaker 3>the intensity of cosmic rays is lower inside our Solar
<v Speaker 3>system some's bubble than outside of it.
<v Speaker 2>So it was basically the ship's lookout, just standing on
<v Speaker 2>the bow of Voyager feeling the physical spray of the
<v Speaker 2>cosmic ocean and telling us exactly where the safety of
<v Speaker 2>our solar system ends and the wild interstellar sea begins.
<v Speaker 3>It's a great analogy. It physically felt the transition when
<v Speaker 3>Voyager one crossed into interstellar space in twenty twelve.
<v Speaker 2>But since Voyager one is literally the only thing out
<v Speaker 2>there right now, how devastating is this loss? I mean,
<v Speaker 2>are we just flying blind now? When it comes to
<v Speaker 2>understanding the interstellar medium.
<v Speaker 3>Well, it is a significant loss. Absolutely. The data the
<v Speaker 3>LEECP provided was wholly unique. Literally, no other human made
<v Speaker 3>object has explored this region. But it's important to contextualize it.
<v Speaker 3>The science team got decades of foundational data about that
<v Speaker 3>boundary where the suns influence wanes and galactic forces take over.
<v Speaker 2>They map the border.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, and here's a truly fascinating, kind of hopeful detail
<v Speaker 3>from the shut down procedure. When they sent the command
<v Speaker 3>to kill the power to the LACP, they deliberately left
<v Speaker 3>one small part of it active.
<v Speaker 2>Wait really, with apart.
<v Speaker 3>A tiny low power step promotor that physically spins the sensor.
<v Speaker 2>Why on Earth would you leave a motor running if
<v Speaker 2>you're so desperate for every fraction of a wat.
<v Speaker 3>Because of the cold vacuum of space, if you stop
<v Speaker 3>a metal gear from moving out there for too long,
<v Speaker 3>the metal parts can literally fuse together in a process
<v Speaker 3>called cold welding.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow, So if they turn it off, it's permanently
<v Speaker 2>welded shut.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly, So they intentionally left the motor taking over just
<v Speaker 3>in case by some miracle, power margins improve in the
<v Speaker 3>future and they want to reactivate it.
<v Speaker 2>That is just incredible. They're shutting down the lab but
<v Speaker 2>leaving the key in the lock, just stubbornly refusing to
<v Speaker 2>close the door completely.
<v Speaker 3>It's that JPL engineering mindset, never say never.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so the LACP is offline, but Voyager one isn't dead.
<v Speaker 2>What exactly is left? What are the final senses this
<v Speaker 2>spacecraft still possesses to navigate?
<v Speaker 3>There are only two primary science instruments left running, the magnetometer,
<v Speaker 3>which measures magnetic fields, and the plasma wave subsystem, which
<v Speaker 3>detects plasma waves and oscillations in the environment.
<v Speaker 2>So it's essentially been stripped down to a compass and
<v Speaker 2>a microphone. Basically, yes, it can't see the particles anymore
<v Speaker 2>like the LACP did, but it can feel the magnetic
<v Speaker 2>pole with the compass, and it can hear the vibrations
<v Speaker 2>of the plasma with the microphone. What kind of picture
<v Speaker 2>does that actually paint of interstellar space?
<v Speaker 3>Like?
<v Speaker 2>What are we learning from that?
<v Speaker 3>Quite a lot? Actually, the magnetometer is incredibly valuable. It
<v Speaker 3>provides continuous readings of the interstellar magnetic field. It shows
<v Speaker 3>scientists how the Sun's magnetic field, that big bubble actually
<v Speaker 3>drapes and interacts at the boundary with the galaxy's magnetic.
<v Speaker 2>Field, right like currents in an ocean meeting each other exactly.
<v Speaker 3>And the plasma wave instrument the microphone is listening to
<v Speaker 3>shocks in the sparse plasma environment. When the Sun spits
<v Speaker 3>out a massive solar flare, that shockwave eventually hits interstellar space,
<v Speaker 3>and the PLA l Asthma wave subsystem can literally hear
<v Speaker 3>the plasma ringing like a bell. That is so cool
<v Speaker 3>it is. And NASA hopes they can run these two
<v Speaker 3>remaining instruments for about another year under the current power.
<v Speaker 2>Constraint, just a year because of that four walt drain.
<v Speaker 3>Right. But and this is where the story gets really wild.
<v Speaker 3>The JPL engineers are not just passively watching the clock
<v Speaker 3>tick down on that year.
<v Speaker 2>No, of course not.
<v Speaker 3>They have a plan, the very radical intervention planned. It's
<v Speaker 3>called the Big Bang Power Saving Initiative.
<v Speaker 2>The Big Bang GAMUT. I was visibly shocked when I
<v Speaker 2>read the details of this in the sources. It sounds
<v Speaker 2>completely insane. Walk us through what this actually is.
<v Speaker 3>So the problem with turning off components to save power
<v Speaker 3>is that those components generate waste heat and that waste
<v Speaker 3>heat actually helps keep the spacecraft warm. Specifically, it helps
<v Speaker 3>keep those crucial hydrazene fuel lines from freezing.
<v Speaker 2>Ah, so if you just turn off a radio or
<v Speaker 2>a sensor, that part of the ship gets too cold.
<v Speaker 3>Exactly. So, the Big Bang initiative involves hot swapping multiple
<v Speaker 3>powered devices all at once. They want to simultaneously switch
<v Speaker 3>to lower power alternatives to drop the overall power draw,
<v Speaker 3>but do it so quickly and carefully that the thermal
<v Speaker 3>stability of the spacecraft isn't compromised.
<v Speaker 2>That is, I mean, I described it in my notes
<v Speaker 2>as doing a heart transplant while the patient is sprinting
<v Speaker 2>away from you.
<v Speaker 3>It's an apt description.
<v Speaker 2>But if power margins are already razor thin and every
<v Speaker 2>single watt is quite literally life or death, isn't swapping
<v Speaker 2>multiple devices at once an incredibly terrifying gamble, Like if
<v Speaker 2>the voltage drops for a second, want it trigger that
<v Speaker 2>fault protection system we talked about?
<v Speaker 3>It absolutely could. It is a massive gamble, but it's
<v Speaker 3>a necessary one to combat the physics of the decaying plutonium.
<v Speaker 3>And they aren't going in blind. They have a brilliant
<v Speaker 3>risk mitigation strategy.
<v Speaker 2>They're going to test it on Voyager two.
<v Speaker 3>First. Yes, Voyager two is in a slightly healthier power state.
<v Speaker 3>So the plan is to test the big bang maneuver
<v Speaker 3>on Voyager two in May or June of twenty twenty six.
<v Speaker 2>Using it as the canary in the coal mine exactly.
<v Speaker 3>And if it's successful, if the thermal mass holds and
<v Speaker 3>the voltage stabilizes, then they will attempt it on Voyager
<v Speaker 3>one note earlier than July.
<v Speaker 2>Wow. And if it works, what's the payoff for taking
<v Speaker 2>that risk?
<v Speaker 3>Success could extend the science operations of the final instruments
<v Speaker 3>toward twenty thirty, So.
<v Speaker 2>They buy themselves four extra years.
<v Speaker 3>Four extra years of absolutely irreplaceable data from the deepest
<v Speaker 3>reaches of space human technology has ever reached.
<v Speaker 2>Which really makes you step back and appreciate the grand
<v Speaker 2>legacy of this whole mission. I mean to understand why
<v Speaker 2>engineers in twenty twenty six are fighting so fiercely for
<v Speaker 2>a single extra watt. You have to look at the
<v Speaker 2>staggering resume of Voyager over the last forty nine years.
<v Speaker 3>It is unmatched in the history of space exploration.
<v Speaker 2>Seriously, like it launched during this rare planetary alignment right,
<v Speaker 2>a gravity assist trajectory that only happens once every one
<v Speaker 2>hundred and seventy five years, right.
<v Speaker 3>The Grand Tour. It allowed the voyagers to use the
<v Speaker 3>gravity of Jupiter to slingshot to Saturn and so on.
<v Speaker 2>In the encounters Jupiter in nineteen seventy nine, getting those
<v Speaker 2>close ups to the Great Red Spot.
<v Speaker 3>And discovering active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon, I owe that
<v Speaker 3>was a paradigm shift. We thought moons were dead rocks,
<v Speaker 3>and suddenly we see volcanos erupting in deep space.
<v Speaker 2>Then Saturn in nineteen eighty, the intricate structure of the
<v Speaker 2>rings diving into the thick atmosphere of Titan, and.
<v Speaker 3>Then the pivot. The planetary mission ended and the Voyager
<v Speaker 3>interstellar mission began. Voyager one crossed the heliopause in twenty
<v Speaker 3>twelve and Voyager two followed in twenty eighteen.
<v Speaker 2>They discovered the magnetic highway out there. It's just a
<v Speaker 2>historical juxtaposition that blows my mind. These machines were built
<v Speaker 2>in an era of eight track tapes and murdery phones,
<v Speaker 2>yet they became our first interstellar scouts.
<v Speaker 3>It's phenomenal engineering.
<v Speaker 2>But I'm curious, how is data from a nineteen seventies
<v Speaker 2>probe still directly influencing modern space programs today, Like why
<v Speaker 2>does NASA need this data for things happening now?
<v Speaker 3>Because it connects directly to humanity's future in space. Think
<v Speaker 3>about the Artemis program, Right, we're trying to send humans
<v Speaker 3>back to the Moon and eventually to Mars.
<v Speaker 2>Right, long duration crude missions.
<v Speaker 3>The biggest thread out there isn't prepared. It's radiation. The
<v Speaker 3>decades of data Voyager collected regarding cosmic radiation and galactic
<v Speaker 3>environments directly inform the shielding models we use today. You
<v Speaker 3>can't design a safe Mars spacecraft without knowing exactly what
<v Speaker 3>kind of radiation environment it's flying into, and Voyager is
<v Speaker 3>the only probe that's actually out there measuring it.
<v Speaker 2>So the data from the LACP is actively protecting future.
<v Speaker 3>Astronauts absolutely, and it also informs the design of future
<v Speaker 3>interstellar probes. Fodger proved that with careful husbandry, machines can
<v Speaker 3>endure decades beyond their design expectations.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, the sheer stubbornness of the human element. The engineers
<v Speaker 2>from the seventies passing the baton to the operators in
<v Speaker 2>twenty twenty.
<v Speaker 3>Six, it spans generations.
<v Speaker 2>Well, this has been an incredible journey today, just to
<v Speaker 2>quickly recap for everyone, We've walked through the agonizing twenty
<v Speaker 2>three hour delay of sending the command to shut down
<v Speaker 2>the LACP. We looked at the physical reality of those
<v Speaker 2>decaying RTG power sources losing four watts a year, and
<v Speaker 2>why the freezing point of hydrozene dictates every single decision, and.
<v Speaker 3>We cover the audacity of that upcoming Big Bang test
<v Speaker 3>to keep those final two instruments running.
<v Speaker 2>Exactly So to everyone listening, I hope it's clear now
<v Speaker 2>that shutting off the LACP is not the end. It's
<v Speaker 2>this brilliant strategic pause in an epic saga.
<v Speaker 3>Every single additional day we receive data from that magnetometer
<v Speaker 3>and plasma wave subsystem is a profound victory for human
<v Speaker 3>ingenuity and curiosity.
<v Speaker 2>It really is. But I want to leave you with
<v Speaker 2>one final kind of provocative thought before we sign off today.
<v Speaker 2>Voyager one is currently traveling at roughly thirty eight thousand
<v Speaker 2>miles per hour, heading generally toward the constellation of Fucus. Now, eventually,
<v Speaker 2>the projections say around twenty thirty two or twenty thirty five,
<v Speaker 2>the power will finally drop solow that total communication loss
<v Speaker 2>will happen.
<v Speaker 3>The RTGs will simply not have the power to run
<v Speaker 3>the transmitter right.
<v Speaker 2>It will go silent. That the spacecraft itself won't stop.
<v Speaker 2>It will continue to drift completely frozen for millions, maybe
<v Speaker 2>billions of years and bolted to its side. Is the
<v Speaker 2>Golden record, that time capsule of Earth's sounds, music and images.
<v Speaker 2>So long after our deep space antennas lose Voyager one signal,
<v Speaker 2>it will still be out there in the dark. It's
<v Speaker 2>going to take tens of thousands of years just to
<v Speaker 2>approach another star system. So think about this. If someone
<v Speaker 2>or something eventually intercepts that silent probe drifting through the
<v Speaker 2>galaxy and they somehow decode that Golden record, will they
<v Speaker 2>ever be able to comprehend the sheer, stubborn human willpower
<v Speaker 2>it took just to keep its eyes open for one
<v Speaker 2>more year.