Voyager at 49: Five-Year Mission Becomes a Half-Century of Cosmic Discovery

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, launched in 1977, are nearing the end of their missions as decaying Plutonium-238 power forces NASA to shut down instruments; yet after almost five decades they’ve delivered unprecedented data from the outer planets and now interstellar space, and NASA hopes to extend their lives into the 2030s while newer observatories—Rubin Observatory, James Webb, Hubble, and the upcoming Roman Space Telescope—carry the torch of cosmic exploration.