Voyager 1, launched in 1977, is running out of power after nearly 50 years in space and will reach one light-day from Earth in November 2026, becoming the most distant human-made object ever. NASA is systematically shutting down instruments to preserve the spacecraft's dwindling energy reserves, having recently rescued it from a months-long glitch by remotely repairing decades-old code.
·Voyager 1 will hit the one light-day milestone on November 18, 2026, a historic cosmic distance record
·Engineers remotely fixed corrupted 46-year-old code aboard the craft, located over 24 billion kilometers away
·NASA is methodically powering down instruments to extend the spacecraft's operational life as power supplies fade
·Both Voyager probes are critically low on power but continuing to transmit after nearly five decades of operation
·The original four-year mission has become humanity's longest-running space exploration effort
drawn from 19FortyFive, Astrobiology Web, IFLScience, Space Daily · updated 3h ago