Voyager Is Dying. The Message Isn't

A command leaves Earth and travels for nearly a full day before it reaches a machine sixteen billion miles away. The instruction is simple and a little cruel: shut down another sense, so you can survive a little longer. One by one, the lights are going out on the most distant thing humanity has ever built. Voyager 1 is running out of power, and within a few years it will fall silent for good. But the most important thing aboard it was never an instrument — and it won't die when the machine does. Bolted to its side is something one man fought to include, an object built to drift through the galaxy long after the spacecraft stops working, long after the people who made it are gone, possibly long after Earth itself. This is the story of Voyager's final years, the scientist who turned its camera around to show us how small we are, and the message we've already launched into the dark that may outlast our entire species.