With some amount of luck, Voyager might last ten more years beyond that:
"Even if science data won't likely be collected after 2025, engineering data could continue to be returned for several more years. The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back to Earth."
What a sweet film. Thank you for the link. This whole time when I heard about work on the Voyager mission I assumed there was a larger team, with fewer single points of failure.
How they manage to squeeze all the resources of the probe and keep it working year after year is an astounding achievement, pleasantly mind-blowing.
It is important that all the know-how about this type of maintenance never disappear. I hope the designs in electronics that this team would have wanted to have available in the probe are implemented in the new designs.
I should see whether there's documentation of what they moved and what they replaced. I imagine there's "plenty" of room to do that (in the sense that there's probably some programs that are no longer mission-relevant because they controlled systems that have been shut down), but I'd love to know what got tossed.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 334 ms ] threadVoyager might make it to 2027.
With some amount of luck, Voyager might last ten more years beyond that:
"Even if science data won't likely be collected after 2025, engineering data could continue to be returned for several more years. The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back to Earth."
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/frequently-asked-questions/
(And then, 15,000 years later, maybe this happens: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football )
I hope the 3rd installment comes out someday. Seems to be on permanent hiatus.
Or are you talking about something else?
Oh, good, it won't have to suffer a year 2038 problem :)
Also: what's with that last link? Definitely didn't expect something to make my browser slow to a crawl.
It is important that all the know-how about this type of maintenance never disappear. I hope the designs in electronics that this team would have wanted to have available in the probe are implemented in the new designs.
Heck of a job.