This is John Batchler. Conversation with my good colleague Bob Zimmerman, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2,

launched in the late 1970s, outside the solar system and fading, fading. Bob reports how the Voyager

control is shutting down one at a time, the systems that have been good for nearly 50 years,

the farthest man-made craft to ever travel.

And where is it going?

You all remember the Star Trek movie about Viger.

Will it come back?

Unknown.

Here's Bob to explain.

More of this tonight. All right, well, I'll use the real term, John.

The voyage of spacecraft that were launched in the 70s, what is it, 47 years ago, both are outside

the heliosphere of the sun.

Essentially, they're in interstellar space right now.

Both have been traveling from almost a half a century.

They have the longest computer operating system continuously operating in history right now, both still working.

But they have a nuclear power source that over time slowly declines in power. And they've been trying to deal with that.

And they expected these things, the power source, to last for a half century or so.

They didn't know the spacecraft themselves would continue operating that long, but they

are.

And right now, the goal is to try to keep these things going for as long as possible to test

the engineering capability as running a spacecraft from

so much distance and so much time.

...