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Both Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, have been bopping along for nearly a half-century, far beyond their original life expectancy. Launched in 1977, the pair was originally intended to study Jupiter and Saturn, their moons, and Saturn's rings. For the two-planet journey, they were built to last just five years.

After their initial success, engineers doubled their objectives to include two more giant planets, Uranus and Neptune. Between the two spacecraft, they've explored four planets, 48 moons, and a host of planetary magnetic fields and rings.
In August 2012, Voyager 1 made history as it entered interstellar space, the region between stars, filled with material ejected by other stars that died millions of years ago. Voyager 1 and 2 are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside of the heliosphere, the region of space affected by the sun's constant flow of material.

Voyager 1 launched from Earth in 1977 and is the farthest human-made object in space. Voyager 1 is speeding away from the solar system at over 38,000 mph and is the farthest human-made object from Earth. It is so far away that it takes 23 hours for a command to reach the spacecraft, and another 23 hours for mission control to hear back from it.

NASA has previously said the Voyagers generate about 4 fewer watts of power annually, limiting the number of systems the spacecraft can use. Flight controllers have occasionally turned off equipment to conserve power. The goal is to keep the two running beyond 2025, according to the agency.