NASA's Voyager mission launched two probes in separate months during the summer of 1977 to observe Jupiter and Saturn over a five-year period. By taking advantage of an optimal planetary alignment, the probes slingshot around the gas giants and extended their mission to include Uranus, Neptune, and the interstellar space past the edge of the solar system, which Voyager 1 and 2 reached in 2012 and 2018, respectively.
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NASA's DSN is a global system of giant radio antennas that receive data from faraway spacecraft like Voyager 1 and the James Webb Space Telescope. It is sensitive enough to detect a signal as weak as a single light bulb from billions of miles away.
This archive includes the many steps it took to put together each Voyager probe. Photos focus on individual parts, like the 8-track tape deck, the large dish-shaped antenna, and its long arm magnetometer boom.
The Voyager Interstellar Mission extended beyond the original planetary flybys to explore the solar system's edge and beyond. Voyager 1 and 2 crossed the heliosheath—the boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium—in 2012 and 2018, respectively.
On Feb. 14, 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the farthest photo of Earth ever captured. Earth appears so small in the image that it takes up less than a single pixel out of 640,000 in the photo's frame.
These instruments track magnetic fields, solar wind particles, radio emissions from the heliopause, and hydrogen levels in the outer heliosphere. Even though each Voyager sends data at just 160 bits per second, NASA receives 6–8 hours of tracking data daily.
Each DSN complex has multiple large, sensitive antennas that can receive weak radio signals from far-off spacecraft and send commands back to them. Their amplifiers are cooled to just above absolute zero to reduce electronic noise.
Housed aboard Voyager 1 and 2, each record serves as a time capsule of human culture and a peaceful introduction to any intelligent life. Even if never played, the records can outlast humanity and travel through space for a billion years.
In November 2023, Voyager 1 began sending unusable data due to a stuck bit in a decades-old memory chip. After months of investigation, engineers managed to reroute the faulty code to a new memory location, restoring functionality in April 2024.
This infographic leads users through the entire Voyager mission timeline, starting at its conception and moving through launch, to each destination, and finally, the Voyagers' crossing into interstellar space.
Beneath its frozen crust, Europa hides a salty ocean heated by tidal forces from Jupiter. This environment may resemble Earth's deep-sea hydrothermal vents and have allowed for the development of life over billions of years.
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