The intrepid twin Voyager spacecraft, launched about two weeks apart in the summer of 1977 and now heading out of the solar system, continue making history. On Jan. 5, 2005 the Voyager team noted a milestone with a nice round number: 10,000 days since Voyager 2's launch. On Jan. 21, 2005 Voyager 1 also passed 10,000 days. Both spacecraft are still going strong and are returning valuable science data. Each Voyagers' cosmic ray detector, magnetometer, plasma wave detector and low-energy charged particle detector all still operational. In addition, the Ultraviolet Spectrometer on Voyager 1 and the Plasma Science instrument on Voyager 2 continue to return data. Both spacecraft are expected to continue to operate and send back valuable data until at least the year 2020.


 


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