Check out AMSAT-OSCAR 7 -- Closer to home, but launched in 1974, and still waking up when there's sun to operate. It's the oldest "operational" satellite still up there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMSAT-OSCAR_7

A truly beautiful piece of engineering

For roughly three milliseconds I thought to myself they shoulda used solar panels instead.

"Oh, wait...."

Just use two of them!

Actually basically yes. NASA has had decades of practice at minimum viable operation capability, making their spacecraft and rovers all but drag themselves along even when anything else would stop working.

So far away that it takes an entire day to get the signal to it. The earth to the sun is 8 minutes.

And somehow we can still talk to it. It's amazing.

This, coupled with the improbable idea that it could be "found" someday, has got to be one of the most exciting and magical concepts in science ever

1-2 day ETA for an interstellar telegram lol

I was actually looking into this a little bit recently and it turns out the Voyager spacecraft launched with 23 watt radio transmitters but at the distance it takes a 72 meter dish to capture the signal and at its capture it is one attowatt. I don't remember my system right offhand, but it's something like a billionth of a billionth of a watt. It's stupidly small.

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 - just before the Reagan era. Coincidence?

Also, and I'm still just guessing here, it's probably the culmination of the space race to the moon minus the pressure to be there before the Russians.

In other words, NASA's Golden Age.

It's not profitable

not enough engineers use LSD anymore because they'll lose their entire career over it and be blacklisted from government contracts forever.

the McCarthys won.

Doesn't even run Outlook, let alone two. Pathetic.

The Voyager mission launched in 1977. If I recall correctly, it takes roughly 80 years for the planets to realign for that purpose. If I didn't misremember, we're about halfway through waiting.

I remember when both Voyagers were making their fly bys. We'd get a bunch of images in magazines and stuff, and then wait several more years for the next planet. Between that and the Space Shuttle flights it was awesome.

I wasn't around for the moon landings so Skylab and Voyager were the highlights of my days.

I think what they mean is that if the thing starts shutting stuff down on its own, the process to get those things started again is tedious. While if the humans tell it to shut things down, it is all more orderly.

Really long stick

Jumper cables.

Makes me wonder how the jumper cables guy is doing.

That bit confused me as well. I'm thinking in case the launch and deployment failed, they could get it back much more easily

Hahaha I said the same thing

Radiation and cold would have killed any electronics long before it would get to another system. And with the electronics dead, nothing would be able to tell the beacon to activate.

Wait does solar power work with other suns? Or just our sun (Sol)? Or just yellow dwarf suns?

The clock ran out years ago. They have been building bridges to New clocks for decades. But yes. Soon it will die, only propelled forward into nothingness and loneliness forever.

Only delusion separates us from the same

It’s wild that they were originally built for a five year mission and they’re still ticking almost 50 years later.

The Voyagers were the first spacecraft that could be reprogrammed after launch. When they launched the technology to get pictures back from Neptune and Uranus didn’t exist yet nor had the code Voyager needed to do it been written yet.

Well it doesn’t have a tank of gasoline and an engine, if that’s what you mean. I think the article is using simplified language, but yeah if they get too cold then the hydrazine lines for the course adjustment thrusters will freeze up and then the antenna will drift out of alignment with earth and we won’t be able to communicate with it anymore