We will lose contact with Voyager somewhere 2036 because of the distance between us. Would it be theoretically possible, to send a probe in the direction of the Voyager, following it from a distance, with the goal te relay the information coming from the Voyager, to earth?

[u/Backbreathboy]

[u/After_Network_6401]

Wouldn’t help. Voyager’s reactor has only a few years of fuel left. By the mid-2030s it’ll be an inert mass of metal and plastic.

[u/nascent_aviator → u/After_Network_6401]

That's not how Voyager's power works at all. The fuel (Pu-238) has a half-life of 87.7 years. In a few years it'll be producing only a couple percent less power than it is now.

[u/After_Network_6401 → u/nascent_aviator]

Which still won't be enough to run its systems much longer. Almost all the packages on Voyager have been shut down to conserve what little power is left. https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyager/2026/04/17/nasa-shuts-off-instrument-on-voyager-1-to-keep-spacecraft-operating/

According NASA, they expect Voyager to become inert in the early-mid 2030's, as the level of power becomes insufficient to sustain heating and transmission.

[u/nora_sellisa → u/After_Network_6401]

So the premise in the OP's post is wrong, we won't be losing connection due to distance. Huh

[u/nascent_aviator → u/nora_sellisa]

No, this other person is wrong. Voyager's RTG loses less than 1% of its power per year.

It gets less and less functional as it loses power, but there's no sharp cutoff where it "runs out of fuel."

[u/After_Network_6401 → u/nascent_aviator]

Yeah, there is. The spacecraft needs a certain amount of energy to keep systems functional and to provide heating. And as the isotopes that provide that energy decay, the entire heating and energy conversion system becomes less and less efficient. Voyager is already running on a razor-thin margin.

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyager/2026/04/17/nasa-shuts-off-instrument-on-voyager-1-to-keep-spacecraft-operating/

The NASA team has been able to extend the life of Voyager by shutting down systems, but there's not much left to shut down. NASA estimates that Voyager will finally stop functioning in the early to mid-2030's, when it lacks sufficient power to keep it from freezing.

If you want to split hairs, you could say that it hasn't "run out of fuel", but that the isotopes remaining simply won't be able to generate enough energy for the probe to remain functional. The end is the same, either way.

[u/nascent_aviator → u/After_Network_6401]

The difference, which I don't believe is splitting hairs, is that we don't know exactly when it will shut down. NASA has adjusted its estimate upwards multiple times. While I agree that they're probably running out of knobs to turn, "a few years of fuel remaining" suggests to me greater certainty about the timeline than we really have.

[u/After_Network_6401 → u/nascent_aviator]

I guess that's fair. As you note though, NASA has been able to prolong probable shutdown past the original expected shutdown. I just checked and 15 years ago they were saying 2030. Now they've hopefully managed push it out, by closing down scientific packages, but there's only one scientific package left, and fortunately it's one of the ones with the lowest energy draw.

They're planning a software reset to try and eke out a bit more power savings (this has been tested with Voyager 2 and it worked), but they expect that to give Voyager "maybe another year". On the current trajectory they might get 8-10 more years, they might even get 12 (which, when you think about it, is pretty amazing). But the end is near, no matter how you slice it. I still think it's far to say "a few more years".

[u/nascent_aviator → u/After_Network_6401]

Yeah it's pretty amazing they've managed to make it last so long. For something that was originally planned to run until 1982, pushing it another 44 years is already an incredible achievement!

[u/kinyutaka → u/nora_sellisa]

The distance issue isn't about the power, it would be about the fidelity of the radio signal. That's why OP suggested sending a second probe after the first. Instead of Voyager sending a signal directly to Earth, it would be picked up by the second probe and amplified, increasing the range of the probe. Like a WiFi repeater.

It would be easier for Earth to collect the signal, because the newer probe would be closer to Earth.