Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched in 1977 and is traveling at almost 40,000 miles per hour. It is currently over 13 billion miles away from Earth. It moved into interstellar space in 2012.
But we are still getting data from Voyager to Earth. It takes 19 hours to get that data. It is estimated that the data will stop in 2025 because the radioisotope thermoelectric generators will stop providing power for the instruments.
Don't write the old spacecraft off. Voyager has fired up a pair of thrusters that haven’t been used for 37 years. NASA engineers noticed the spacecraft’s attitude changed using trajectory control maneuver thrusters to make minute adjustments to the craft’s orientation and keep its antenna pointed back at Earth.
When it passed Saturn (how strange to write that), they went dead, but now after almost 40 years they are back. NASA can use the thrusters to make adjustments, which will use up more energy but could add a few years to the mission’s life.
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