pulsar map voyager 1

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Frequently Asked Questions

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golden record

Where are they now.

• frequently asked questions
• Q&A with Ed Stone

Can the Voyager imaging cameras be turned back on?

What instruments on the spacecraft are still working and what have been turned off?

How long can Voyager 1 and 2 continue to function?

Voyager 1 is expected to keep its current suite of science instruments on through 2021. Voyager 2 is expected to keep its current suite of science instruments on through 2020.

The radioisotope thermoelectric generator on each spacecraft puts out 4 watts less each year. Because of this diminishing electrical power, the Voyager team has had to prioritize which instruments to keep on and which to turn off. Heaters and other spacecraft systems have also been turned off one by one as part of power management.

The Voyager team has chosen to keep operating the instruments that are the most likely to send back key data about the heliosphere and interstellar space -- the fields and particles instruments. Engineers expect to begin turning off fields and particles science instruments one by one, starting in 2020 for Voyager 2. Voyager 2 will have to start turning science instruments off sooner because it is currently operating one more instrument than Voyager 1. Engineers expect each spacecraft to continue operating at least one science instrument until around 2025.

Even if science data won't likely be collected after 2025, engineering data could continue to be returned for several more years. The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back to Earth.

Where are Voyager 1 and 2 today? How do they compare to other spacecraft on an outbound trajectory?

Where is Voyager 1 going? When will it get there? How about Voyager 2?

Where do we consider our solar system to end; Pluto's orbit? Solar apex?

Have any human-made objects ever exited the solar system?

Are the distance counters rolling backwards?

Did either of the Voyagers visit Pluto? Why didn't the Voyagers fly by Pluto?

When we send spacecraft through the asteroid belt to the outer planets, how do we navigate the craft through the belt?

I was reading Dr. Carl Sagan's biography recently and found that he persuaded NASA administrators to turn one of the Voyager space probes around in order to take a last image of the solar system. Is this true? Do the craft send back any images of where they are?

I can not locate a copy of the Murmurs of Earth CD. Would you know of a vendor that might sell copies of it?

Who was on the committee with Dr. Sagan regarding the development of the Golden Record? Both American or foreign scientists?

If there is intelligent life in our universe and they were not a peace loving species, wouldn't the information on the Voyager be enough to destroy human kind?

What were the most important discoveries of the Voyager space probes?

How big is Voyager? How much does it weigh?

Is it true that a sketch by Da Vinci is included in the "Message to the Universe" of Voyagers 1 and 2?

What kind of computers are used on the Voyager spacecraft?

How fast are the Voyager computers?

What is the "direction" (constellation and/or star) both VOYAGER 1 & 2 and the Pioneers are "aimed" for, at present.

Where can I find pictures of what the Voyager spacecraft took?

Is there some sort of plate with pictograms on the Voyager 1 spacecraft? Also is it similar to the Pioneer spacecraft plaque?

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The Voyager Golden Record, Cover of the Voyager Golden Record, The golden record's location on Voyager (middle-bottom-left).

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The Golden Record

Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

The Golden Record Cover

In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary arithmetic is the correct time of one rotation of the record, 3.6 seconds, expressed in time units of 0,70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom. The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in. Below this drawing is a side view of the record and stylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record - about an hour.

The information in the upper right-hand portion of the cover is designed to show how pictures are to be constructed from the recorded signals. The top drawing shows the typical signal that occurs at the start of a picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picture as a series of vertical lines, similar to ordinary television (in which the picture is a series of horizontal lines). Picture lines 1, 2 and 3 are noted in binary numbers, and the duration of one of the "picture lines," about 8 milliseconds, is noted. The drawing immediately below shows how these lines are to be drawn vertically, with staggered "interlace" to give the correct picture rendition. Immediately below this is a drawing of an entire picture raster, showing that there are 512 vertical lines in a complete picture. Immediately below this is a replica of the first picture on the record to permit the recipients to verify that they are decoding the signals correctly. A circle was used in this picture to ensure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction.

The drawing in the lower left-hand corner of the cover is the pulsar map previously sent as part of the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11. It shows the location of the solar system with respect to 14 pulsars, whose precise periods are given. The drawing containing two circles in the lower right-hand corner is a drawing of the hydrogen atom in its two lowest states, with a connecting line and digit 1 to indicate that the time interval associated with the transition from one state to the other is to be used as the fundamental time scale, both for the time given on the cover and in the decoded pictures.

Electroplated onto the record's cover is an ultra-pure source of uranium-238 with a radioactivity of about 0.00026 microcuries. The steady decay of the uranium source into its daughter isotopes makes it a kind of radioactive clock. Half of the uranium-238 will decay in 4.51 billion years. Thus, by examining this two-centimeter diameter area on the record plate and measuring the amount of daughter elements to the remaining uranium-238, an extraterrestrial recipient of the Voyager spacecraft could calculate the time elapsed since a spot of uranium was placed aboard the spacecraft. This should be a check on the epoch of launch, which is also described by the pulsar map on the record cover.

The  Voyager Golden Records  are two  phonograph records  that were included aboard both  Voyager spacecraft  launched in 1977. The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent  extraterrestrial life  form who may find them. The records are a sort of  time capsule .

Although neither Voyager spacecraft is heading toward any particular star,  Voyager 1  will pass within 1.6  light-years ' distance of the star  Gliese 445 , currently in the constellation  Camelopardalis , in about  40,000 years .

Carl Sagan  noted that "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring  civilizations  in  interstellar  space, but the launching of this  'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean'  says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by  Carl Sagan  of  Cornell University . The selection of content for the record took almost a year. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals (including the songs of  birds  and  whales ). To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in 55 ancient and modern languages, other human sounds, like footsteps and laughter (Sagan's), and printed messages from U.S. president  Jimmy Carter  and  U.N.   Secretary-General   Kurt Waldheim . The record also includes the inspirational message  Per aspera ad astra  in  Morse code .

The collection of images includes many photographs and diagrams both in black and white, and color. The first images are of scientific interest, showing mathematical and physical quantities, the  Solar System  and its planets,  DNA , and human  anatomy  and  reproduction . Care was taken to include not only pictures of humanity, but also some of animals, insects, plants and landscapes. Images of humanity depict a broad range of cultures. These images show food, architecture, and humans in portraits as well as going about their day-to-day lives. Many pictures are annotated with one or more indications of scales of time, size, or mass. Some images contain indications of  chemical composition . All measures used on the pictures are defined in the first few images using physical references that are likely to be consistent anywhere in the  universe .

The musical selection is also varied, featuring works by composers such as  J.S. Bach  (interpreted by  Glenn Gould ),  Mozart ,  Beethoven  (played by the  Budapest String Quartet ), and  Stravinsky . The disc also includes music by  Guan Pinghu ,  Blind Willie Johnson ,  Chuck Berry ,  Kesarbai Kerkar ,  Valya Balkanska , and electronic composer  Laurie Spiegel , as well as  Azerbaijani folk music  ( Mugham ) by oboe player  Kamil Jalilov . The inclusion of Berry's " Johnny B. Goode " was controversial, with some claiming that rock music was "adolescent", to which Sagan replied, "There are a lot of adolescents on the planet." The selection of music for the record was completed by a team composed of Carl Sagan as project director,  Linda Salzman Sagan ,  Frank Drake ,  Alan Lomax ,  Ann Druyan  as creative director, artist  Jon Lomberg ,  Timothy Ferris  as producer, and  Jimmy Iovine  as sound engineer.

The Golden Record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of  Ann Druyan . During the recording of the brainwaves, Druyan thought of many topics, including Earth's history, civilizations and the problems they face, and what it was like to fall in love.

After NASA had received  criticism over the nudity on the Pioneer plaque  (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. Instead, only a silhouette of the couple was included. However, the record does contain "Diagram of vertebrate evolution", by  Jon Lomberg , with drawings of an anatomically correct naked male and naked female, showing external organs.

The  pulsar  map and hydrogen molecule diagram are shared in common with the  Pioneer plaque .

The 115 images are encoded in analogue form and composed of 512 vertical lines. The remainder of the record is audio, designed to be played at 16⅔ revolutions per minute.

Jimmy Iovine , who was still early in his career as a music producer, served as sound engineer for the project at the recommendation of  John Lennon , who was contacted to contribute but was unable to take part.

Sagan's team wanted to include the  Beatles  song " Here Comes the Sun " on the record, but the record company  EMI , which held the copyrights, declined. In the 1978 book  Murmurs of Earth , the failure to secure permission for the song is cited as one of the legal challenges faced by the team compiling the Voyager Golden Record. In the book, Sagan said that the Beatles favoured the idea, but "[they] did not own the copyright, and the legal status of the piece seemed too murky to risk." When asked about the obstacle presented by EMI with regard to "Here Comes the Sun", despite the artists' wishes, Ann Druyan said in 2015: "Yeah, that was one of those cases of having to see the tragedy of our planet. Here's a chance to send a piece of music into the distant future and distant time, and to give it this kind of immortality, and they're worried about money ... we got this telegram [from EMI] saying that it will be $50,000 per record for two records, and the entire Voyager record cost $18,000 to produce." However, this was refuted in 2017 by Timothy Ferris; in his recollection, "Here Comes the Sun" was never considered for inclusion.

In July 2015, NASA uploaded the audio contents of the record to the audio streaming service  SoundCloud .

In the upper left-hand corner is a drawing of the  phonograph record  and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in  binary arithmetic  is the correct time of one rotation of the record, 3.6 seconds, expressed in time units of 0.70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a  fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom . The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in. Below this drawing is a side view of the record and stylus, with a binary number giving the time to play one side of the record—about an hour (more precisely, between 53 and 54 minutes).

The information in the upper right-hand portion of the cover is designed to show how pictures are to be constructed from the recorded signals. The top drawing shows the typical signal that occurs at the start of a picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picture as a series of vertical lines, similar to analog  television  (in which the picture is a series of horizontal lines). Picture lines 1, 2 and 3 are noted in binary numbers, and the duration of one of the "picture lines," about 8 milliseconds, is noted. The drawing immediately below shows how these lines are to be drawn vertically, with staggered "interlace" to give the correct picture rendition. Immediately below this is a drawing of an entire picture  raster , showing that there are 512 (2 9 ) vertical lines in a complete picture. Immediately below this is a replica of the first picture on the record to permit the recipients to verify that they are decoding the signals correctly. A circle was used in this picture to ensure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction. Color images were represented by three images in sequence, one each for red, green, and blue components of the image. A color image of the spectrum of the sun was included for calibration purposes.

The drawing in the lower left-hand corner of the cover is the pulsar map previously sent as part of the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11. It shows the location of the Solar System with respect to 14  pulsars , whose precise periods are given. The drawing containing two circles in the lower right-hand corner is a drawing of the  hydrogen atom  in its two lowest states, with a connecting line and digit 1 to indicate that the time interval associated with the transition from one state to the other is to be used as the fundamental time scale, both for the time given on the cover and in the decoded pictures.

Blank records were provided by the  Pyral  S.A. of  Créteil , France.  CBS Records  contracted the JVC Cutting Center in  Boulder, Colorado , to cut the  lacquer masters  which were then sent to the James G. Lee record-processing center in  Gardena, California , to cut and gold-plate eight Voyager records. After the records were plated they were mounted in aluminum containers and delivered to JPL.

The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter. The record's cover is  aluminum  and  electroplated  upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope  uranium-238 . Uranium-238 has a  half-life  of 4.468 billion years. It is possible (e.g. via  mass-spectrometry ) that a civilization that encounters the record will be able to use the ratio of remaining uranium to the other elements to determine the age of the record.

The records also had the inscription  "To the makers of music – all worlds, all times"  hand-etched on its surface. The inscription was located in the "takeout grooves", an area of the record between the label and playable surface. Since this was not in the original specifications, the record was initially rejected, to be replaced with a blank disc. Sagan later convinced the administrator to include the record as is.

Voyager 1  was launched in 1977, passed the orbit of  Pluto  in 1990, and left the  Solar System  (in the sense of passing the  termination shock ) in November 2004. It is now in the  Kuiper belt . In about 40,000 years, it and  Voyager 2  will each come to within about 1.8  light-years  of two separate stars:  Voyager 1  will have approached star  Gliese 445 , located in the constellation  Camelopardalis ; and  Voyager 2  will have approached star  Ross 248 , located in the constellation of  Andromeda .

In March 2012,  Voyager 1  was over 17.9 billion km from the Sun and traveling at a speed of 3.6  AU  per year (approximately 61,000 km/h (38,000 mph)), while  Voyager 2  was over 14.7 billion km away and moving at about 3.3 AU per year (approximately 56,000 km/h (35,000 mph)).

Voyager 1  has entered the  heliosheath , the region beyond the termination shock. The termination shock is where the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically charged gas blowing continuously outward from the Sun, is slowed by pressure from gas between the stars. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from its average speed of 300–700 km/s (670,000–1,570,000 mph) and becomes denser and hotter.

Of the eleven instruments carried on  Voyager 1 , five of them are still operational and continue to send back data today. It is expected that there will be insufficient energy to power any of the instruments beyond 2025.

On September 12, 2013, NASA announced that  Voyager 1  had left the heliosheath and entered  interstellar space , although it still remains within the Sun's gravitational sphere of influence.

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The cover of the Golden Record, sent into deep space aboard the twin Voyager spacecraft. The pulsar map that points the way to Earth is the starburst pattern seen at the lower left.

• NO PLACE LIKE HOME

No, a Map NASA Sent to Space Is Not Dangerous to Earth

Claims about the pulsar maps carried by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft are dangerously distorting the facts.

Let’s be clear: The map to Earth that NASA sent into space aboard the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft is not dangerous. It certainly hasn’t “ made it a lot easier for aliens to attack Earth ,” it won’t “ lead to extraterrestrials taking over ” our planet, and no one is rethinking this “ unintended ‘foolish’ act .”

These claims, which have been seeping through the news media over the past 24 hours, are based on a misinterpretation of a story we published about this map in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Voyager launches.

That story describes how 14 known pulsars can be used as galactic signposts to help aliens find Earth, should the spacecraft bearing them across the cosmos be intercepted in the near future.

As part of reporting that story, I interviewed my dad, Frank Drake, who created the map in 1971. During our conversation, we talked about how the pulsar map might fit into the current debate about deliberately sending messages to extraterrestrial civilizations.

His answer: “In those days, all the people I dealt with were optimists, and they thought the ETs would be friendly,” Drake says. “Nobody thought, even for a few seconds, about whether this might be a dangerous thing to do.”

All this statement means is that today’s debate was not occurring in the 1970s. It’s several cosmic leaps of logic between that and fearing “ this decision could prove to be disastrous ,” or that he’s having reservations “ about the decision to guide aliens to Earth ,” or that he is suggesting “ the maps could be dangerous. ”

Frank Drake, the founder of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, stands at his California home in 2015.

When asked how he would respond to these statements, Drake says: “The pulsar map is not dangerous at all. It will likely never even be seen by extraterrestrials. Even then, it will be perhaps millions of years from now.”

The truth is that Drake isn’t re-thinking the safety of sending the pulsar maps into deep space; he’s not even opposed to the idea of sending targeted messages to ET once we know where they are—he just thinks it’s not a good use of our available resources, which ought to be invested in detecting ET instead.

Kathryn Denning, the York University anthropologist we interviewed for the original story, agrees that the map on its own is not a significant risk when it comes to humans announcing our presence.

After all, we’ve been passively broadcasting radio signals from Earth for decades. These messages travel at the speed of light, wash over whatever is in their path, and are easily detected from afar.

By contrast, the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft aren’t aimed at anything in particular, and detecting them from afar would require extraordinarily powerful radar systems and a heaping dose of luck.

What’s more, it will take them tens of thousands of years to brush by the next stars along their paths. Even then, the chances of the probes colliding with a planet or spaceship are so astronomically small they’re essentially zero.

While the concept of crafting a map for aliens may spark questions about much more targeted efforts to make contact, in reality, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record carrying the pulsar map are not so much messages to the stars as messages to ourselves.

The concept of NASA committing a foolish, dangerous act that might reap the wrath of a violent alien civilization is certainly compelling. It’s also fictional—or in the jargon of today, fake news.

Media organizations are already under attack from those who would deem anything disagreeable “fake.” We continually have to prove that facts are actually facts, that the truth needs telling, and that reason, pragmatism, and logical thought have places in civil discourse and in society.

There certainly is a place for fantasy when talking about the cosmos and how we fit into it, but that place is not in news stories sold as factual.

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Time Capsule in the Stars: Exploring Voyager 1’s Golden Record

In September 2013, NASA announced that the Voyager 1 probe had successfully entered interstellar space; the first human-made object to do so. As the probe continues forth into the vast unknown, it carries with it a special collection of “welcome signs” for any life forms it may encounter. Known as the Voyager Golden Record, this 12” gold plated copper disc was designed to operate similarly to a phonograph record. The disc is filled with sounds and images from Earth. Carefully selected by a committee led by Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University, the Voyager Golden Record includes the following:

• Sounds from nature, including thunder and wind, and animals such as whales and birds
• 55 spoken greetings in various Earth dialects, both ancient and modern
• Printed messages from US President Jimmy Carter and UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim
• A 90-minute collection of music from various cultures
• 115 images from Earth

Both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes carry a copy of the Voyager Golden Record. The record was designed to be played at a speed of 16 2/3 rotations per minute; half the speed of traditional vinyl records. Not to leave the greeting without an instruction manual, NASA meticulously crafted a cover for the record, using a collection of images and binary code to provide the proper setup needed to play the record that would transcend any language barrier. A stylus is included with the record to allow for it to be played.

The upper left portion of the record’s cover shows visual directions for how to properly play the record, including placement of the stylus to the record, playing from the outside of the record to the inside, and the speed at which to play the record. The lower left portion features a pulsar map, previously included on plaques for Voyager’s predecessors, the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes. The map shows the position of the sun in relation to 14 different pulsars. The upper right portion shows how to extrapolate the images from the disc, using the signal, which decodes to a series of 512 vertical lines. It also includes an image of a circle, the first image used to verify that the images have been decoded correctly. The time scale with which to use as reference is the final piece of the puzzle, showcased in the image on the bottom right. Instead of relying on seconds and minutes (derived from Earth’s rotation), the code on the Golden Record relies on the fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom (approximately 0,70 billionths of a second) as the preferred time scale.

While the likelihood of encountering intelligent life along Voyager 1’s current trajectory may be minimal (even equated by Dr. Sagan as tossing a “bottle into the cosmic ocean”), the Golden Record serves as a conscientious time capsule of tiny blue dot that is the planet Earth.

Voyager Fun Facts:

• Despite their numerical ordering, Voyager 1 was actually launched 16 days AFTER Voyager 2. Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, with Voyager 1 launching September 5. Voyager 1’s trajectory varied from Voyager 2, with Voyager 1 planned to reach Jupiter and Saturn first.
• While the Voyager program only consisted of two probes, the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture uses a fictionalized continuation of the program (a NASA probe designated Voyager 6) as a main plot point.
• Traveling at the speed of light, a signal sent from Earth takes approximately 17 hours to reach Voyager 1 and 14 hours to reach Voyager 2.
• Voyager 1’s power supply is very limited, and will have to shut down all instrument operation by the year 2025.

-B. P. Stoyle Scientifics Direct, Inc.

Source: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

• Posted by Scientifics Direct
• September 17 2013
• Tags: golden record nasa voyager voyager 1

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A 40-Year Old Voyager Spacecraft Can Guide Aliens to Earth

Voyager 1 and voyager 2 contain detailed pulsar maps that lead back to us..

A Simple Map

40 years ago,  NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft  and a plan was devised in the event that intelligent life wanted to find their origin point. That plan involved the creation of a map that would lead the finders of the Voyager probes back to Earth. Now, it couldn't be any old map that used directions like North, South, East, West, or vague locations like "the third planet from the Sun."

Instead,  astrophysicist Frank Drake decided to create a map that used pulsars — massive neutron stars that can live for millions of years. They often look like they're flickering, but are actually spinning constantly, and slow down with age, and by timing those flickers, you can figure out their spin rate. As explained by Nadia Drake at National Geographic , an intelligent being who found the Voyager and the accompanying map could measure the current spin rate of a pulsar, and compare it to the spin rate noted on the map, informing them of how long the probe had been traveling.

Frank Drake and fellow astrophysicist Carl Sagan decided on this in 1971, six years before either of the Voyagers were launched. 14 pulsars were used for the original map, which contains lines connecting each pulsar to the Sun as the central point. The pulsars' individual spin rates are written on the lines in binary code, with the entire map inscribed on the Voyager Golden Record .

"There was a magic about pulsars … no other things in the sky had such labels on them," explained Drake. "Each one had its own distinct pulsing frequency, so it could be identified by anybody, including other creatures after a long period of time and far, far away."

More Than One Way to Find a Planet

The Pulsar map isn't the only way we've provided extraterrestrial life with a way to track us down. It's widely known that we've sent radio messages and signals to space, including the Aceribo Message  which was initially sent in 1974. Even unintentional signals have been sent from various radio and TV broadcasts over the years.

Presently, organizations like Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) are putting more funding into sending additional messages to the stars, while the Breakthrough Message initiative is encouraging a new round of debates about what should be said if/when we find alien life (or it finds us). These efforts are going so far as to hold a competition in which people come up with the "best" digital messages, though there are no plans to send them just yet.

Some are against the idea of continually letting the Universe know we're here, and how to find us. With regards to the Voyager probe, though, it's unlikely the map will ever reach anyone that can read it.

"The thing is going something like 10 kilometers (6 miles) per second, at which speed it takes—for the typical separation of stars—about half a million years to go from one star to another," said Drake. "And of course, it’s not aimed at any star, it’s just going where it’s going."

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Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark

The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a “Pale Blue Dot,” hasn’t sent usable data from interstellar space in months.

By Orlando Mayorquin

When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, scientists hoped it could do what it was built to do and take up-close images of Jupiter and Saturn. It did that — and much more.

Voyager 1 discovered active volcanoes, moons and planetary rings, proving along the way that Earth and all of humanity could be squished into a single pixel in a photograph, a “ pale blue dot, ” as the astronomer Carl Sagan called it. It stretched a four-year mission into the present day, embarking on the deepest journey ever into space.

Now, it may have bid its final farewell to that faraway dot.

Voyager 1 , the farthest man-made object in space, hasn’t sent coherent data to Earth since November. NASA has been trying to diagnose what the Voyager mission’s project manager, Suzanne Dodd, called the “most serious issue” the robotic probe has faced since she took the job in 2010.

The spacecraft encountered a glitch in one of its computers that has eliminated its ability to send engineering and science data back to Earth.

The loss of Voyager 1 would cap decades of scientific breakthroughs and signal the beginning of the end for a mission that has given shape to humanity’s most distant ambition and inspired generations to look to the skies.

“Scientifically, it’s a big loss,” Ms. Dodd said. “I think — emotionally — it’s maybe even a bigger loss.”

Voyager 1 is one half of the Voyager mission. It has a twin spacecraft, Voyager 2.

Launched in 1977, they were primarily built for a four-year trip to Jupiter and Saturn , expanding on earlier flybys by the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes.

The Voyager mission capitalized on a rare alignment of the outer planets — once every 175 years — allowing the probes to visit all four.

Using the gravity of each planet, the Voyager spacecraft could swing onto the next, according to NASA .

The mission to Jupiter and Saturn was a success.

The 1980s flybys yielded several new discoveries, including new insights about the so-called great red spot on Jupiter, the rings around Saturn and the many moons of each planet.

Voyager 2 also explored Uranus and Neptune , becoming in 1989 the only spacecraft to explore all four outer planets.

Voyager 1, meanwhile, had set a course for deep space, using its camera to photograph the planets it was leaving behind along the way. Voyager 2 would later begin its own trek into deep space.

“Anybody who is interested in space is interested in the things Voyager discovered about the outer planets and their moons,” said Kate Howells, the public education specialist at the Planetary Society, an organization co-founded by Dr. Sagan to promote space exploration.

“But I think the pale blue dot was one of those things that was sort of more poetic and touching,” she added.

On Valentine’s Day 1990, Voyager 1, darting 3.7 billion miles away from the sun toward the outer reaches of the solar system, turned around and snapped a photo of Earth that Dr. Sagan and others understood to be a humbling self-portrait of humanity.

“It’s known the world over, and it does connect humanity to the stars,” Ms. Dodd said of the mission.

She added: “I’ve had many, many many people come up to me and say: ‘Wow, I love Voyager. It’s what got me excited about space. It’s what got me thinking about our place here on Earth and what that means.’”

Ms. Howells, 35, counts herself among those people.

About 10 years ago, to celebrate the beginning of her space career, Ms. Howells spent her first paycheck from the Planetary Society to get a Voyager tattoo.

Though spacecraft “all kind of look the same,” she said, more people recognize the tattoo than she anticipated.

“I think that speaks to how famous Voyager is,” she said.

The Voyagers made their mark on popular culture , inspiring a highly intelligent “Voyager 6” in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and references on “The X Files” and “The West Wing.”

Even as more advanced probes were launched from Earth, Voyager 1 continued to reliably enrich our understanding of space.

In 2012, it became the first man-made object to exit the heliosphere, the space around the solar system directly influenced by the sun. There is a technical debate among scientists around whether Voyager 1 has actually left the solar system, but, nonetheless, it became interstellar — traversing the space between stars.

That charted a new path for heliophysics, which looks at how the sun influences the space around it. In 2018, Voyager 2 followed its twin between the stars.

Before Voyager 1, scientific data on the sun’s gases and material came only from within the heliosphere’s confines, according to Dr. Jamie Rankin, Voyager’s deputy project scientist.

“And so now we can for the first time kind of connect the inside-out view from the outside-in,” Dr. Rankin said, “That’s a big part of it,” she added. “But the other half is simply that a lot of this material can’t be measured any other way than sending a spacecraft out there.”

Voyager 1 and 2 are the only such spacecraft. Before it went offline, Voyager 1 had been studying an anomalous disturbance in the magnetic field and plasma particles in interstellar space.

“Nothing else is getting launched to go out there,” Ms. Dodd said. “So that’s why we’re spending the time and being careful about trying to recover this spacecraft — because the science is so valuable.”

But recovery means getting under the hood of an aging spacecraft more than 15 billion miles away, equipped with the technology of yesteryear. It takes 45 hours to exchange information with the craft.

It has been repeated over the years that a smartphone has hundreds of thousands of times Voyager 1’s memory — and that the radio transmitter emits as many watts as a refrigerator lightbulb.

“There was one analogy given that is it’s like trying to figure out where your cursor is on your laptop screen when your laptop screen doesn’t work,” Ms. Dodd said.

Her team is still holding out hope, she said, especially as the tantalizing 50th launch anniversary in 2027 approaches. Voyager 1 has survived glitches before, though none as serious.

Voyager 2 is still operational, but aging. It has faced its own technical difficulties too.

NASA had already estimated that the nuclear-powered generators of both spacecrafts would likely die around 2025.

Even if the Voyager interstellar mission is near its end, the voyage still has far to go.

Voyager 1 and its twin, each 40,000 years away from the next closest star, will arguably remain on an indefinite mission.

“If Voyager should sometime in its distant future encounter beings from some other civilization in space, it bears a message,” Dr. Sagan said in a 1980 interview .

Each spacecraft carries a gold-plated phonograph record loaded with an array of sound recordings and images representing humanity’s richness, its diverse cultures and life on Earth.

“A gift across the cosmic ocean from one island of civilization to another,” Dr. Sagan said.

Orlando Mayorquin is a general assignment and breaking news reporter based in New York. More about Orlando Mayorquin

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

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A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show  in the coming months.

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