NASA is doing everything it can to keep the Voyager missions going

NASA is doing everything it can to keep the incredibly long-lived Voyager probes going, with the agency cutting power to some of their scientific instruments.

Launched in 1977, the spacecraft are the most far-flung human-made objects in the universe and the only to ever operate in interstellar space: Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles from Earth, and radio signals between it and our planet take 23 hours to arrive. Voyager 2 is some 13 billion miles away.

Their mission was supposed to last five years, and almost 50 years on, their nuclear batteries are running low: Still, NASA hopes to keep the probes going into the 2030s as they are our only direct contact with the space environment beyond our Sun’s influence.