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NASA is rationing watts to keep its oldest mission going. //
Beyond Earth and its bubble of satellites; past Mars, where rovers explore; past Jupiter and its circling orbiter—outside the solar system entirely—two spacecraft are gliding across interstellar space. They have crossed over the invisible boundary that separates our solar system from everything else, into territory untouched by the influence of the sun. People have seen much deeper into the universe, thanks to powerful telescopes that catch the light of distant stars. But this is the farthest a human invention has ever traveled. These hunks of gleaming metal and circuitry—they are the furthermost tangible proof of our existence. //
They prepare for what may be the mission’s final years. “Someday we’re going to have to say goodbye,” says Candy Hansen, a scientist at the Planetary Science Institute who worked on the Voyager mission in the 1970s and 1980s.
But not yet. This summer, engineers instructed Voyager 2 to fire up a set of thrusters that the spacecraft hasn’t used since 1989.