Interstellar Mission
Since its planetary mission is over, Voyager 2 is now described as working on an interstellar mission, which NASA is using to find out what the Solar System is like beyond the heliosphere. On August 30, 2007, Voyager 2 passed the termination shock into the heliosheath, approximately 1 billion miles (1.6 billion km) closer to the Sun than Voyager 1 did. This is due to the interstellar magnetic field of deep space. The southern hemisphere of the Solar System's heliosphere is being pushed in.
Voyager 2 is not headed toward any particular star. If left alone, it should pass by star Sirius, which is currently about 2.6 parsecs from the Sun and moving diagonally towards the Sun, at a distance of 1.32 parsecs (4.3 ly, 25 trillion miles) in about 296,000 years.
Voyager 2 is expected to keep transmitting weak radio messages until at least 2025, over 48 years after it was launched.
| Year | End of specific capabilities as a result of the available electrical power limitations |
|---|---|
| 1998 | Terminate scan platform and UV observations |
| 2007 | Termination of Digital Tape Recorder (DTR) operations (It was no longer needed due to a failure on the High Waveform Receiver on the Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS) on June 30, 2002.) |
| 2008 | Power off Planetary Radio Astronomy Experiment (PRA) |
| 2015 approx | Termination of gyroscopic operations |
| 2020 approx | Initiate instrument power sharing |
| 2025 or slightly afterwards | Can no longer power any single instrument |
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“It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational.”
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907–1961)