Voyager 1 is down to two working science instruments, and the fix that just bought its twin, Voyager 2, another year of power is now being tested on a probe NASA says no longer behaves quite like its sibling
Voyager 1 is still crossing interstellar space with six computers holding about 68 kilobytes of memory between them — less storage than a single compressed photograph on a modern phone
How the Voyager missions rewrote planetary science, tested the limits of 1970s engineering, and became humanity's longest-running experiment in institutional patience
Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 with a suite of 10 science instruments — as of 2026, only two remain switched on, and the spacecraft's nuclear power source loses roughly 4 watts every year, a slow drain that is now deciding what humanity still gets to learn from interstellar space