Tragedy:Nasa Shutting Down Voyager Spacecrafts After 45 YEARS@TheCosmosNews

#thecosmosnews NASA has plans to power down its Voyager spacecraft after four-and-a-half decades – here s what you need to know. The US space agency s Voyager program consists of two robotic interstellar probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Initially, the two spacecraft, which were launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977, headed into space to study Jupiter and Saturn. Their mission was only meant to last five years, however, the instruments have endured in deep space for nearly 45 years. And since their launch, the probes have traveled a remarkable 14.46 billion miles from Earth – further than any man-made object. However, now Nasa has announced that the Voyager program is coming to an end, as the two spacecraft are entering their very final phase. "We re at 44 and a half years, so we ve done 10 times the warranty on the darn things," Nasa physicist Ralph McNutt told Scientific American. By 2025, both vehicles, which run via radioisotope thermoelectric generators, are expected to run out of power. In the meantime, Nasa has been eliminating features to keep the machines operating until then. "Because of this diminishing electrical power, the Voyager team has had to prioritize which instruments to keep on and which to turn off," Nasa said on its Voyager webpage.