With Voyager 1 losing contact after floating billions of miles and sending back stunning images, PAUL BRACCHI on the tin can that smashed through the final frontier (and will sail on for eternity)

As incredible as it may seem today, the Voyager 1 spacecraft’s computers, which were considered state-of-the-art in 1977 – the year Elvis left the building for the last time – have 240,000 times less memory than an iPhone.

The radio antenna, which protrudes from the central circular dish like a robotic insect’s antenna, is equally archaic, putting out as many watts as a light bulb in a refrigerator.

The built-in tape recorder, which is constantly on, differs little from that in a typical car from the 1970s, such as a Ford Cortina.

By the way, the reason the machine hums permanently is because the small amount of heat it generates is enough to keep the nearby fuel line from freezing.

Today, after nearly 50 years of exploring the cosmic unknown and, incredibly and against all odds, traveling 15 billion miles, this little can – the size of a small car – still drives and communicates with ground control on Earth.

After almost 50 years, Voyager is still communicating with ground control on Earth

The radio antenna, which protrudes from the central circular dish like a robot insect’s antenna, is equally archaic, putting out as many watts as a light bulb in a refrigerator.

Think about that if you can’t get a signal on your mobile or the Wi-Fi connection drops.

But in one respect, Voyager 1 (well, really the spacecraft’s NASA handlers) has embraced the digital age, using X (formally Twitter) to tell its story.

“There’s just something about the vastness of space that really makes you think about your place in the universe,” NASAVoyager wrote philosophically in a recent tweet.

However, Voyager is starting to show signs of age and has stopped transmitting effectively for the time being.

The useful data it returns in binary code has been meaningless since last year. However, NASA engineers are optimistic that they can solve this problem, which stems from a single computer chip.

But even if Voyager’s nuclear batteries (which use electricity generated from the heat produced by the decay of the chunk of plutonium that powers Voyager) run out in the coming years and the umbilical cord to Earth is severed forever, the spacecraft will continue to float through the Earth. universe forever, whatever fate befalls humanity.

Long after the pyramids have crumbled into the desert, the oceans have boiled over – if that is indeed the case – and the last breath of humanity has been extinguished, despite some unforeseen disaster, Voyager will still continue on its great journey to infinity and beyond, a silent ambassador of our existence in the galaxy.

On board is a record of what life was like on Earth: a gold-plated copper disc resembling a vinyl LP, complete with a stylus, intended for any alien civilizations Voyager might encounter during this odyssey into the future.

The ‘collection album’, compiled by legendary astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan, contains everything from Azerbaijani bagpipes to the sounds of humpback whales. Music includes Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, gospel blues singer Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry.

The choice of Beethoven’s Cavatina has a special synergy. While the project was being researched, one chanced upon the composer’s diaries in the New York Times archives, in which he had written: ‘Will they like my music on Venus? What will they think on Uranus?’

But there is no Elvis Presley, who died in 1977, or The Beatles.

Sagan and his team wanted to follow the example of Voyager’s predecessors, Pioneer 10 and 11, which had depicted a naked man and woman on plaques attached to their sides, but politicians thought they were too dirty, so only a silhouette of them was a man and a woman shown. place the ‘golden disk’ to represent an ‘essential part of the nature of humanity’. How attitudes have changed.

In 1977, two Voyager spacecraft were launched to explore the planets in the outer solar system

As part of NASA’s mission in the summer of 1977, two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, identical in every detail, were launched within fifteen days of each other.

Voyager 2 first launched on August 20, on a slower and longer trajectory than its sister probe. It is now over 12 billion kilometers from Earth. Voyager 1 was launched on September 5.

It now takes more than 22 hours for a message to reach Voyager 1 and 22 hours for a response to come back (at least that’s what happened before it was plagued by recent technical issues).

The launch dates were chosen to take advantage of a rare alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – something that only happens once every 175 years – allowing the probes to visit all four planets.

One of the many special facts about the project is that both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were built primarily for a four-year mission.

“Nasa didn’t want anyone to spend time or money on anything beyond the basic mission,” said engineer Chris Jones, who started working on the spacecraft four years before launch. “That’s all we were allowed to ask.”

But 46 years later, the mission is still in its infancy. The next closest star to the Sun is more than 40,000 years away, which puts this statement into perspective.

Of all the images brought back to us over the years, perhaps the most iconic – and humbling – is the one taken on Valentine’s Day 1990 when Voyager 1, then 6.7 billion kilometers from the sun, turned its cameras around and snapped a photo of made the earth. distilled to a single pixel that became known as the ‘pale blue dot’ and the furthest photograph ever taken from home.

A 3D illustration of a Voyager 1 spacecraft in a deep space field

A photo taken by a spacecraft Voyager 1 – as part of NASA’s mission in the summer of 1977, two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 – identical in every detail – were launched within 15 days of each other

You can’t stare at the pale blue dot, initially mistaken for a speck of dust, without being struck by how fragile and small our place in the cosmos is.

Furthermore, to quote lead project scientist Ed Stone, “few expeditions in human history have achieved as many scientific achievements as the twin Voyager probes.”

The spacecraft may be stuck in 1970s technology, but, as he noted, Voyager 1 “was the first computer-controlled spacecraft ever launched and it still flies itself, it pilots itself, it monitors itself and it can switch gears.” to backup. -up systems in themselves’.

In the 1980s it provided new insights into the red spot on Jupiter, the famous rings around Saturn and the fact that these planets, unlike Earth, have many moons.

Where exactly are the Voyagers now? A few years ago they passed through the “heliosphere,” which some consider the edge of the solar system, the cosmic equivalent of the doldrums where the fast solar winds come to rest and where nothing earthly has happened before.

“The goal is to keep them flying as long as possible,” says a program manager.

“As you can imagine, they’re twins… one has hearing loss, the other doesn’t see very well, so we’ll have to be very careful.”

Among the messages on the ‘gold disk’ is a message from the late Jimmy Carter, then president of the US.

“This is a gift from a small, distant world,” he wrote, “a sign of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We’re trying to survive our time so we can live in yours.’

These words seem especially relevant in our time of nuclear crisis – but will there be anyone who can read them?