NASA's two Voyager spacecraft have spent almost half a century traveling through distant space.
The probes, which launched less than a month apart in the summer of 1977, have survived a lot, from dwindling power supplies and grimy thrusters to near-fatal software glitches.
Voyager 1, in particular, which is currently floating past the generally-defined edge of the solar system some 15 billion miles away, is looking worse for wear these days.
Most recently, scientists became worried after the lonely probe started sending nonsensical messages back to Earth — as if its senility was catching up with it.
"It basically stopped talking to us in a coherent manner," Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd told NPR. "It's a serious probl
Instead of beaming back binary code over billions of miles, Voyager 1 is sending 1s and 0s that just alternate.
Efforts to reset the aging probe have failed so far — but that shouldn't come as a surprise, considering the technology dates back to the mid-1970s.
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