Intended to last four years, the Voyager spacecraft have lasted nearly five decades

Voyager spacecraft defied expectations and only powered down after 47 years in space

Originally built for a four-year mission, Voyagers 1 and 2 used a rare planetary alignment and gravity assists to reach interstellar space. With limited power and aging systems, they will continue to send data until the mid-2030s. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Voyager science teams still collect valuable space data using four active tools

These instruments track magnetic fields, solar wind particles, radio emissions from the heliopause, and hydrogen levels in the outer heliosphere. Even though each Voyager sends data at just 160 bits per second, NASA receives 6–8 hours of tracking data daily.

Voyager 1 and 2 are the only spacecraft to reach and study interstellar space

The Voyager Interstellar Mission extended beyond the original planetary flybys to explore the solar system's edge and beyond. Voyager 1 and 2 crossed the heliosheath—the boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium—in 2012 and 2018, respectively.

NASA fixed Voyager 1’s glitchy memory from 24 billion kilometers away

In November 2023, Voyager 1 began sending unusable data due to a stuck bit in a decades-old memory chip. After months of investigation, engineers managed to reroute the faulty code to a new memory location, restoring functionality in April 2024.

Explore a NASA timeline of the entire Voyager mission

This infographic leads users through the entire Voyager mission timeline, starting at its conception and moving through launch, to each destination, and finally, the Voyagers' crossing into interstellar space.

Voyager mission's Golden Record captures Earth’s essence for alien discovery

Housed aboard Voyager 1 and 2, each record serves as a time capsule of human culture and a peaceful introduction to any intelligent life. Even if never played, the records can outlast humanity and travel through space for a billion years.

Voyager carries Earth's hopeful greeting into deep space as a message of peace

Along with scientific instruments, each Voyager carried a golden record containing multilingual greetings—ranging from Sumerian and Akkadian to Thai and Cantonese—music, and sounds of Earth intended for any intelligent life that might find it.

Between 1993 and 2009, Hubble was serviced for repairs and upgrades 5 times

Across 21 space walks totaling 144 hours, replacement instruments, gyroscopes, solar arrays, batteries, and computer systems have helped extend the Hubble Space Telescope's operational lifetime beyond its planned 15 years.

Congress settled for the Viking program after canceling the Voyager Mars program

NASA's proposed Voyager missions to Mars and Venus in the 1970s were canceled due to budget cuts and the Apollo 1 fire. The Viking program's smaller scope—focused on data collection—was the economically viable alternative to manned Mars mission proposals.

Planetary exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life kicked off with Viking

NASA's Viking 1 and 2 missions revealed Mars' geological activity and potential for past life through their evidence of past surface water. Viking 1 held the record for the longest Mars surface operation until the Opportunity rover surpassed it in 2010.

View a media gallery from the assembly of Voyager 1 and 2

This archive includes the many steps it took to put together each Voyager probe. Photos focus on individual parts, like the 8-track tape deck, the large dish-shaped antenna, and its long arm magnetometer boom.

Voyager Station, the world's first space hotel, is planned for 2027

The structure spans 488 meters in diameter and will rotate to simulate one-sixth of Earth's gravity while circumnavigating the planet every 90 minutes. The Voyager Station is designed to accommodate 450 guests and 150 crew members, providing amenities such as restaurants, a sports hall, and a movie theater.

A return to Uranus

There's been only one mission to Uranus before—Voyager 2 passed by the ice giant in 1986 before heading off into interstellar space. NASA's recent planned itinerary for space missions lists Uranus as the highest priority over the next decade. The seventh planet is 20 times as far from the sun as Earth, and researchers say its study will shed light on how the outer half of the Solar System formed.

Take a 360-degree tour of Discovery with Kathryn Sullivan and Charles Bolden, who flew together on the space shuttle during its deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope. (VR device-compatible)

View a timeline of NASA's Space Shuttle program, which saw five reusable orbiters take a total of 355 astronauts across a combined distance of almost six trips to the sun.

View 60 years of NASA space exploration

Established in 1958—a year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has taken humanity into outer space and helped reveal the nature of the universe. Historic moments include the Apollo 11 mission putting humanity on the Moon and construction of the International Space Station.

The most common spacewalk spacesuits are over four decades old

NASA's Extravehicular Mobility Unit has been in use since the 1980s, with 11 units of the model in existence and four in active use on the ISS at any given time. It consists of 11 layers, a primary life support system (which resembles a backpack), a drinking bag, and more.

Viking established entry, descent, and landing methods for future planetary visits

The most significant engineering challenge was slowing the Viking lander, which would move through space at nearly 29,000 kilometers per hour before reaching Mars. This required the invention of supersonic parachute technology, which is still used today.

Explore a timeline of every mission to Mars through 2020

The US has conducted the most missions (23) and has the highest success rate (74%), followed by Russia (18 missions at 5%). The first successful orbiter was Mariner 4, while Viking 1 was the first successful lander.

Space probes propelled by lasers may one day visit distant planetary systems

Launched in 2016, Breakthrough Starshot is a project to send gram-sized spacecraft to the nearest stars and their planets at 10% to 20% the speed of light after being accelerated by ground-based laser systems. The project requires orders of magnitude advancements to current technology.

The Viking landers were the first spacecraft to conduct experiments on Mars

NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 missions tested soils for signs of life, captured images, and studied the Martian atmosphere, revealing evidence of ancient water flow, volcanic soil, and a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere.

Explore the interior and exterior of the Atlantis and Endeavour space shuttles, including their flight decks, cargo bays, and other compartments.

Voyager 1 captured Earth as a 'Pale Blue Dot' from 6 billion kilometers away

On Feb. 14, 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe took the farthest photo of Earth ever captured. Earth appears so small in the image that it takes up less than a single pixel out of 640,000 in the photo's frame.

The USSR’s Venera program made the only successful landings on Venus

While the Soviet space program is famous for launching the first satellite and human into orbit, its most extraordinary feat was the Venera missions—probes that captured data, images, and audio from Venus’s brutal surface. No other nation has repeated the achievement.

The twenty-year effort to design the Webb's optics

Since its located 1 million miles from Earth, the Webb space observatory has to be able to repair itself—no Space Shuttles can be dispatched with astronaut engineers to repair it. That's why over two decades teams reiterated, cross-checked, and hyper-optimized the Webb's observing surface. Their efforts produced the world's largest space-based optical surface that is peering billions of years back in time. Learn the wild engineering of the telescope here.

View the first photos ever taken from the Martian surface, courtesy of NASA's Viking Project.

See to the edge of the universe with this two-decade astronomy project

A New Mexico telescope has captured astronomical data for two decades to compile this map of the universe. Starting from earth and ending at the "edge" of the universe, it shows one slice of the cosmos: a total of 200,000 galaxies.

Explore a timeline of NASA's exploration of Mars

NASA has studied Mars extensively over 60 years using telescopes, orbiters, and rovers. From April 2021 to January 24, the Ingenuity helicopter completed its technology demonstration objective by flying more than 17 kilometers above the Martian surface.

The 45 planets astronomers think are most likely to host alien life

The list includes familiar names like Proxima Centauri b (4 light-years away) and four planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system (about 40 light-years away), but even the nearest of those would take humanity roughly 114,000 years to reach at current spacecraft speeds. The list's real near-term value is as a targeting guide for the James Webb and upcoming Nancy Grace Roman space telescopes.

New ways of seeing the cosmos have redrawn the map of human identity

From Galileo’s crude spyglass to the James Webb Space Telescope, each technological leap has expanded our observational reach and redefined philosophical and moral conceptions of our place in the universe. Identifying signs of life through the study of exoplanet atmospheres would represent the next great revolution.

The next generation of space-based observatories

How exactly does a space telescope come to be funded by NASA? NASA's most famous telescopes, like Hubble and James Webb, were once featured in the decadal survey–a once per decade survey run by the National Academy of Science that recommends which projects to support. This article and podcast covers which telescope designs are in contention to be part of NASA's next generation of space-based observatories.

Atmospheric drag is causing the Hubble Space Telescope to drift toward Earth slowly

Without interventions to boost the observatory to a higher orbit, Hubble is expected to fall to Earth's surface in the mid-2030s. In the meantime, the telescope is expected to continue to be productive by shifting its mode of operation to rely on a single gyroscope, down from three.

Most elements of the International Space Station were installed over two decades

Space shuttles delivered storage carriers, docking compartments, airlocks, solar arrays, and labs, which were assembled in low Earth orbit. The station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm, alongside maneuvering spacewalkers, has assisted with this assembly since its installation in 2001.

Read the NASA overview of the results of Viking’s biological experiments on Mars

Three experiments on the Viking 1 and 2 landers searched for signs of metabolic activity in soil samples, indicating the presence of microorganisms. No definitive evidence of life was found in any experiment or lander imaging.

Learn about the Parker Solar Probe, which 'touched' the sun in 2021

Launched in 2018, the probe is named after Eugene Parker, who predicted the existence of the solar wind in the 1950s. The probe's carbon-composite shielding has protected it from significant solar radiation as it has traveled through the sun's corona—the outermost layer of its atmosphere—though it will never reach the sun's surface during successive flybys.

Explore how far you've traveled through space while living on Earth

Using the "Cosmic Odometer," users can enter their birthday and learn how far they have moved through space due to the combined effects of Earth's rotation around its axis, the planet's orbit around the sun, the solar system's trajectory through the Milky Way, and the galaxy's motion through the universe.

HeLa cells, 'immortal' cancerous cells that continuously divide, were sent into space in 1960 on both Soviet and American missions—the samples were shared by American researchers as an example of scientific diplomacy amid the Cold War.

The International Space Station is powered entirely by large solar arrays

Launched in 1998, its original solar panels were designed to withstand no more than 20 years of wear from temperature swings and micrometeoroid impacts in space. Replacement panels that roll out like carpets have since been installed.

James Webb Space Telescope aims to unlock secrets of the early universe

Decades in the making, JWST is designed to study the universe in infrared light, allowing it to see through cosmic dust and observe ancient galaxies, star formation, and potentially life-supporting exoplanets. The Webb will orbit the sun at a stable point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

A data visualization exploring six decades of spacewalks

Astronauts' initial small step for mankind may standout, but how many steps have we taken so far? Space and moonwalks further our understanding of spaceflight, celestial bodies, and space itself. Created to resemble a constellation map, this chart...

The Hubble Space Telescope made discoveries within our solar system and across the universe

The observatory helped confirm the presence of water on Jupiter's moon Europa, and uncovered seasonal variations on planets like Uranus. It also observed exoplanets and gravitational lensing, proved the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, and detected the accelerated expansion of the universe.

In honor of scientific exploration, all five launched space shuttles were named after ships that traveled the oceans, but a campaign from 'Star Trek' fans led to the shuttle prototype being named Enterprise.

By measuring radio signals transmitted to and received from distant spacecraft, NASA's Deep Space Network can determine a spacecraft's position and speed and send commands to alter its trajectory.

View galleries of images taken by the Voyager spacecraft, including close-ups of Uranus, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, Saturn's ring system, and Neptune's Great Dark Spot.

See who is in space right now

Over 600 people have been in space since the space race took off decades ago, with roughly 10 in space at any given time, typically operating the world's growing number of space stations. This fun, simple tracker keeps up on who is in space right now and provides links to each space traveler's profile.

Space archaeology studies space trash in the context of heritage and social meaning

Some orbiting objects, such as Elon Musk's Tesla, have symbolic or historical importance, despite being functionally worthless. The oldest human-made object in Earth's orbit is Vanguard 1, a grapefruit-sized satellite launched in 1958. The strangest may be an experimental, inflatable space station containing live cockroaches.

Space telescope development was driven by a desire to bypass Earth's atmosphere

The most important figure in the effort to create what would become the Hubble Space Telescope was Lyman Spitzer, who first proposed a telescope in orbit in 1946. The nearly 50-year endeavor led to space-based observatories, which are not limited by Earth's atmosphere absorbing or distorting most wavelengths of light.

Between 2002 and 2025, upgrades have increased LIGO's detection range tenfold

After the construction of Initial LIGO was completed in 1999, no gravitational waves were detected during operations between 2002 and 2010. Instrument redesigns and significant technological improvements brought about Advanced LIGO, which began observations in 2015. Continued upgrades between continuous laser runs have improved detection sensitivity and stability.

The Polaris Dawn was a privately crewed spaceflight

SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule Resilience spent five days in low Earth orbit as part of the first of three planned missions under the name Polaris Dawn. The historic journey took participants farther away from our planet than anyone has been since the Apollo missions.