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Interstellar Messengers

Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the Sun. Voyager 1 reached the interstellar boundary in 2012, while Voyager 2 (traveling slower and in a different direction than its twin) reached it in 2018.

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The Interstellar Mission

After completing the first in-depth reconnaissance of the outer planets, the twin Voyagers are on a new mission to chart the edge of interstellar space.

The Golden Record

The contents of the golden record were selected for NASA by a committee led by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.

The Spacecraft

The twin Voyagers are escaping our solar system in different directions at more than 3 astronomical units (AU) a year.

The Pale Blue Dot

The behind-the-scenes story of the making of Voyager 1's iconic image of Earth as "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

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Our Solar System

Heliosphere

July 1, 2022

21 min read

Record-Breaking Voyager Spacecraft Begin to Power Down

The pioneering probes are still running after nearly 45 years in space, but they will soon lose some of their instruments

By Tim Folger

NASA/JPL-Caltech

I f the stars hadn't aligned, two of the most remarkable spacecraft ever launched never would have gotten off the ground. In this case, the stars were actually planets—the four largest in the solar system. Some 60 years ago they were slowly wheeling into an array that had last occurred during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson in the early years of the 19th century. For a while the rare planetary set piece unfolded largely unnoticed. The first person to call attention to it was an aeronautics doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology named Gary Flandro.

It was 1965, and the era of space exploration was barely underway—the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, only eight years earlier. Flandro, who was working part-time at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., had been tasked with finding the most efficient way to send a space probe to Jupiter or perhaps even out to Saturn, Uranus or Neptune. Using a favorite precision tool of 20th-century engineers—a pencil—he charted the orbital paths of those giant planets and discovered something intriguing: in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all four would be strung like pearls on a celestial necklace in a long arc with Earth.

This coincidence meant that a space vehicle could get a speed boost from the gravitational pull of each giant planet it passed, as if being tugged along by an invisible cord that snapped at the last second, flinging the probe on its way. Flandro calculated that the repeated gravity assists, as they are called, would cut the flight time between Earth and Neptune from 30 years to 12. There was just one catch: the alignment happened only once every 176 years. To reach the planets while the lineup lasted, a spacecraft would have to be launched by the mid-1970s.

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READY FOR LAUNCH: Voyager 2 undergoes testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before its flight ( left ). The spacecraft lifted off on August 20, 1977. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As it turned out, NASA would build two space vehicles to take advantage of that once-in-more-than-a-lifetime opportunity. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, identical in every detail, were launched within 15 days of each other in the summer of 1977. After nearly 45 years in space, they are still functioning, sending data back to Earth every day from beyond the solar system's most distant known planets. They have traveled farther and lasted longer than any other spacecraft in history. And they have crossed into interstellar space, according to our best understanding of the boundary between the sun's sphere of influence and the rest of the galaxy. They are the first human-made objects to do so, a distinction they will hold for at least another few decades. Not a bad record, all in all, considering that the Voyager missions were originally planned to last just four years.

Early in their travels, four decades ago, the Voyagers gave astonished researchers the first close-up views of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, revealing the existence of active volcanoes and fissured ice fields on worlds astronomers had thought would be as inert and crater-pocked as our own moon. In 1986 Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to fly past Uranus; three years later it passed Neptune. So far it is the only spacecraft to have made such journeys. Now, as pioneering interstellar probes more than 12 billion miles from Earth, they're simultaneously delighting and confounding theorists with a series of unexpected discoveries about that uncharted region.

Their remarkable odyssey is finally winding down. Over the past three years NASA has shut down heaters and other nonessential components, eking out the spacecrafts' remaining energy stores to extend their unprecedented journeys to about 2030. For the Voyagers' scientists, many of whom have worked on the mission since its inception, it is a bittersweet time. They are now confronting the end of a project that far exceeded all their expectations.*

“We're at 44 and a half years,” says Ralph McNutt, a physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), who has devoted much of his career to the Voyagers. “So we've done 10 times the warranty on the darn things.”

The stars may have been cooperating, but at first, Congress wasn't. After Flandro's report, NASA drew up plans for a so-called Grand Tour that would send as many as five probes to the four giant planets and Pluto. It was ambitious. It was expensive. Congress turned it down. “There was this really grand vision,” says Linda Spilker, a JPL planetary scientist who started working on the Voyager missions in 1977, a few months before their launch. “Because of cost, it was whittled back.”

Congress eventually approved a scaled-down version of the Grand Tour, initially called Mariner Jupiter-Saturn 1977, or MJS 77. Two spacecraft were to be sent to just two planets. Nevertheless, NASA's engineers went about designing, somewhat surreptitiously, vehicles capable of withstanding the rigors of a much longer mission. They hoped that once the twin probes proved themselves, their itinerary would be extended to Uranus, Neptune, and beyond.

“Four years—that was the prime mission,” says Suzanne Dodd, who, after a 20-year hiatus from the Voyager team, returned in 2010 as the project manager. “But if an engineer had a choice to put in a part that was 10 percent more expensive but wasn't something that was needed for a four-year mission, they just went ahead and did that. And they wouldn't necessarily tell management.” The fact that the scientists were able to build two spacecraft, and that both are still working, is even more remarkable, she adds.

In terms of both engineering and deep-space navigation, this was new territory. The motto “Failure is not an option” hadn't yet been coined, and at that time it would not have been apt. In the early 1960s NASA had attempted to send a series of spacecraft to the moon to survey future landing sites for crewed missions. After 12 failures, one such effort finally succeeded.

GOLDEN RECORD: Each Voyager carries a golden record ( left ) of sounds and images from Earth in case the spacecraft are intercepted by an extraterrestrial civilization. Engineers put the cap on Voyager 1’s record before its launch ( right ). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“In those days we always launched two spacecraft” because the failure rate was so high, said Donald Gurnett, only partly in jest. Gurnett, a physicist at the University of Iowa and one of the original scientists on the Voyager team, was a veteran of 40 other space missions. He spoke with me a few weeks before his death in January. (In an obituary, his daughter Christina said his only regret was that “he would not be around to see the next 10 years of data returning from Voyager.”)

When the Voyagers were being built, only one spacecraft had used a gravity assist to reach another planet—the Mariner 10 probe got one from Venus while en route to Mercury. But the Voyagers would be attempting multiple assists with margins of error measured in tens of minutes. Jupiter, their first stop, was about 10 times farther from Earth than Mercury. Moreover, the Voyagers would have to travel through the asteroid belt along the way. Before Voyager there had been a big debate about whether spacecraft could get through the asteroid belt “without being torn to pieces,” McNutt says. But in the early 1970s Pioneer 10 and 11 flew through it unscathed—the belt turned out to be mostly empty space—paving the way for Voyager, he says.

To handle all these challenges, the Voyagers, each about the size of an old Volkswagen Beetle, needed some onboard intelligence. So NASA's engineers equipped the vehicles' computers with 69 kilobytes of memory, less than a hundred thousandth the capacity of a typical smartphone. In fact, the smartphone comparison is not quite right. “The Voyager computers have less memory than the key fob that opens your car door,” Spilker says. All the data collected by the spacecraft instruments would be stored on eight-track tape recorders and then sent back to Earth by a 23-watt transmitter—about the power level of a refrigerator light bulb. To compensate for the weak transmitter, both Voyagers carry 12-foot-wide dish antennas to send and receive signals.

“It felt then like we were right on top of the technology,” says Alan Cummings, a physicist at Caltech and another Voyager OG. “I'll tell you, what was amazing is how quickly that whole thing happened.” Within four years the MJS 77 team had built three spacecraft, including one full-scale functioning test model. The spacecraft were rechristened Voyager 1 and 2 a few months before launch.

Although many scientists have worked on the Voyagers over the decades, Cummings can make a unique claim. “I was the last person to touch the spacecraft before they launched,” he says. Cummings was responsible for two detectors designed to measure the flux of electrons and other charged particles when the Voyagers encountered the giant planets. Particles would pass through a small “window” in each detector that consisted of aluminum foil just three microns thick. Cummings worried that technicians working on the spacecraft might have accidentally dented or poked holes in the windows. “So they needed to be inspected right before launch,” he says. “Indeed, I found that one of them was a little bit loose.”

Credit: Graphic by Matthew Twombly and Juan Velasco (5W Infographic); Consultants: John Richardson (principal investigator, Voyager Plasma Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Space Research) and Merav Opher (professor, Department of Astronomy, Boston University)

Voyager 1 reached Jupiter in March 1979, 546 days after its launch. Voyager 2, following a different trajectory, arrived in July of that year. Both spacecraft were designed to be stable platforms for their vidicon cameras, which used red, green and blue filters to produce full-color images. They hardly spin at all as they speed through space—their rotational motion is more than 15 times slower than the crawl of a clock's hour hand, minimizing the risk of blurred images. Standing-room crowds at JPL watched as the spacecraft started transmitting the first pictures of Jupiter while still about three or four months away from the planet.

“In all of the main conference rooms and in the hallways, they had these TV monitors set up,” Spilker says. “So as the data came down line by line, each picture would appear on a monitor. The growing anticipation and the expectation of what we were going to see when we got up really, really close—that was tremendously exciting.”

Cummings vividly recalls the day he caught his first glimpse of Jupiter's third-largest moon, Io. “I was going over to a building on the Caltech campus where they were showing a livestream [of Voyager's images],” he says. “I walk in, and there's this big picture of Io, and it's all orange and black. I thought, okay, the Caltech students had pulled a prank, and it's a picture of a poorly made pizza.”

Io's colorful appearance was completely unexpected. Before the Voyagers proved otherwise, the assumption had been that all moons in the solar system would be more or less alike—drab and cratered. No one anticipated the wild diversity of moonscapes the Voyagers would discover around Jupiter and Saturn.

The first hint that there might be more kinds of moons in the heavens than astronomers had dreamed of came while the Voyagers were still about a million miles from Jupiter. One of their instruments—the Low-Energy Charged Particle [LECP] detector system—picked up some unusual signals. “We started seeing oxygen and sulfur ions hitting the detector,” says Stamatios Krimigis, who designed the LECP and is now emeritus head of the space department at Johns Hopkins APL. The density of oxygen and sulfur ions had shot up by three orders of magnitude compared with the levels measured up to that point. At first, his team thought the instrument had malfunctioned. “We scrutinized the data,” Krimigis says, “but there was nothing wrong.”

The Voyagers' cameras soon solved the mystery: Io had active volcanoes. The small world—it is slightly larger than Earth's moon—is now known to be the most volcanically active body in the solar system. “The only active volcanoes we knew of at the time were on Earth,” says Edward Stone, who has been the project scientist for the Voyager missions since 1972. “And here suddenly was a moon that had 10 times as much volcanic activity as Earth.” Io's colors—and the anomalous ions hitting Krimigis's detector—came from elements blasted from the moon's volcanoes. The largest of Io's volcanoes, known as Pele, has blown out plumes 30 times the height of Mount Everest; debris from Pele covers an area about the size of France.

The twin spacecraft took a grand tour through the giant planets of the solar system, passing by Jupiter ( 1 , 2 ) and Saturn ( 5 , 6 ) and taking the first close-up views of those planets’ moons. Jupiter’s satellite Europa ( 3 ), for instance, turned out to be covered with ice, and its moon Io ( 4 ) was littered with volcanoes—discoveries that came as a surprise to scientists who had assumed the moons would be gray and crater-pocked like Earth’s. Voyager 2 went on to fly by Uranus ( 7 ) and Neptune ( 8 ), and it is still the only probe to have visited there. Credit: NASA/JPL ( 1 , 2 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 8 ); NASA/JPL/USGS (3); NASA/JPL-Caltech ( 7 )

Altogether, the Voyagers took more than 33,000 photographs of Jupiter and its satellites. It felt like every image brought a new discovery: Jupiter had rings; Europa, one of Jupiter's 53 named moons, was covered with a cracked icy crust now estimated to be more than 60 miles thick. As the spacecraft left the Jupiter system, they got a farewell kick of 35,700 miles per hour from a gravity assist. Without it they would not have been able to overcome the gravitational pull of the sun and reach interstellar space.

At Saturn, the Voyagers parted company. Voyager 1 hurtled through Saturn's rings (taking thousands of hits from dust grains), flew past Titan, a moon shrouded in orange smog, and then headed “north” out of the plane of the planets. Voyager 2 continued alone to Uranus and Neptune. In 1986 Voyager 2 found 10 new moons around Uranus and added the planet to the growing list of ringed worlds. Just four days after Voyager 2's closest approach to Uranus, however, its discoveries were overshadowed when the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch. All seven of Challenger 's crew members were killed, including Christa McAuliffe, a high school teacher from New Hampshire who would have been the first civilian to travel into space.

Three years later, passing about 2,980 miles above Neptune's azure methane atmosphere, Voyager 2 measured the highest wind speeds of any planet in the solar system: up to 1,000 mph. Neptune's largest moon, Triton, was found to be one of the coldest places in the solar system, with a surface temperature of −391 degrees Fahrenheit (−235 degrees Celsius). Ice volcanoes on the moon spewed nitrogen gas and powdery particles five miles into its atmosphere.

Voyager 2's images of Neptune and its moons would have been the last taken by either of the spacecraft had it not been for astronomer Carl Sagan, who was a member of the mission's imaging team. With the Grand Tour officially completed, NASA planned to turn off the cameras on both probes. Although the mission had been extended with the hope that the Voyagers would make it to interstellar space—it had been officially renamed the Voyager Interstellar Mission—there would be no photo ops after Neptune, only the endless void and impossibly distant stars.

ERUPTION: The discovery of the volcano Pele, shown in this photograph from Voyager 1, confirmed that Jupiter’s moon hosts active volcanism. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

Sagan urged NASA officials to have Voyager 1 transmit one last series of images. So, on Valentine's Day in 1990, the probe aimed its cameras back toward the inner solar system and took 60 final shots. The most haunting of them all, made famous by Sagan as the “Pale Blue Dot,” captured Earth from a distance of 3.8 billion miles. It remains the most distant portrait of our planet ever taken. Veiled by wan sunlight that reflected off the camera's optics, Earth is barely visible in the image. It doesn't occupy even a full pixel.

Sagan, who died in 1996, “worked really hard to convince NASA that it was worth looking back at ourselves,” Spilker says, “and seeing just how tiny that pale blue dot was.”

Both Voyagers are now so far from Earth that a one-way radio signal traveling at the speed of light takes almost 22 hours to reach Voyager 1 and just over 18 to catch up with Voyager 2. Every day they move away by another three to four light-seconds. Their only link to Earth is NASA's Deep Space Network, a trio of tracking complexes spaced around the globe that enables uninterrupted communication with spacecraft as Earth rotates. As the Voyagers recede from us in space and time, their signals are becoming ever fainter. “Earth is a noisy place,” says Glen Nagle, outreach and communications manager at the Deep Space Network's facility in Canberra, Australia. “Radios, televisions, cell phones—everything makes noise. And so it gets harder and harder to hear these tiny whispers from the spacecraft.”

Faint as they are, those whispers have upended astronomers' expectations of what the Voyagers would find as they entered the interstellar phase of the mission. Stone and other Voyager scientists I spoke with cautioned me not to conflate the boundary of interstellar space with that of the solar system. The solar system includes the distant Oort cloud, a spherical collection of cometlike bodies bound by the sun's gravity that may stretch halfway to the closest star. The Voyagers won't reach its near edge for at least another 300 years. But interstellar space lies much closer at hand. It begins where a phenomenon called the solar wind ends.

Like all stars, the sun emits a constant flow of charged particles and magnetic fields—the solar wind. Moving at hypersonic speeds, the wind blows out from the sun like an inflating balloon, forming what astronomers call the heliosphere. As the solar wind billows into space, it pulls the sun's magnetic field along for the ride. Eventually pressure from interstellar matter checks the heliosphere's expansion, creating a boundary—preceded by an enormous shock front, the “termination shock”—with interstellar space. Before the Voyagers' journeys, estimates of the distance to that boundary with interstellar space, known as the heliopause, varied wildly.

“Frankly, some of them were just guesses,” according to Gurnett. One early guesstimate located the heliopause as close as Jupiter. Gurnett's own calculations, made in 1993, set the distance at anywhere from 116 to 177 astronomical units, or AU—about 25 times more distant. (One AU is the distance between Earth and the sun, equal to 93 million miles.) Those numbers, he says, were not very popular with his colleagues. By 1993 Voyager 1 already had 50 AU on its odometer. “If [the heliopause] was at 120 AU, that meant we had another 70 AU to go.” If Gurnett was right, the Voyagers, clipping along at about 3.5 AU a year, wouldn't exit the heliosphere for at least another two decades.

That prediction raised troubling questions: would the Voyagers—or the support of Congress—last that long? The mission's funding had been extended on the expectation that the spacecraft would cross the heliopause at about 50 AU. But the spacecraft left that milestone behind without finding any of the anticipated signs of interstellar transit. Astronomers had expected the Voyagers to detect a sudden surge in galactic cosmic rays—high-energy particles sprayed like shrapnel at nearly the speed of light from supernovae and other deep-space cataclysms. The vast magnetic cocoon formed by the heliosphere deflects most low-energy cosmic rays before they can reach the inner solar system. “[It] shields us from at least 75 percent of what's out there,” Stone says.

The Voyager ground team was also waiting for the spacecraft to register a shift in the prevailing magnetic field. The interstellar magnetic field, thought to be generated by nearby stars and vast clouds of ionized gases, would presumably have a different orientation from the magnetic field of the heliosphere. But the Voyagers had detected no such change.

Gurnett's 1993 estimates were prescient. Almost 20 years passed before one of the Voyagers finally made it to the heliopause. During that time the mission narrowly survived threats to its funding, and the Voyager team shrank from hundreds of scientists and engineers to a few dozen close-knit lifers. Most of them remain on the job today. “When you have such a long-lived mission, you start to regard people like family,” Spilker says. “We had our kids around the same time. We'd take vacations together. We're spanning multiple generations now, and some of the younger people on Voyager were not even born [when the spacecraft] launched.”

The tenacity and commitment of that band of brothers and sisters were rewarded on August 25, 2012, when Voyager 1 finally crossed the heliopause. But some of the data it returned were baffling. “We delayed announcing that we had reached interstellar space because we couldn't come to an agreement on the fact,” Cummings says. “There was lots of debate for about a year.”

Although Voyager 1 had indeed found the expected jump in plasma density—its plasma-wave detector, an instrument designed by Gurnett, inferred an 80-fold increase—there was no sign of a change in the direction of the ambient magnetic field. If the vehicle had crossed from an area permeated by the sun's magnetic field to a region where the magnetic field derived from other stars, shouldn't that switch have been noticeable? “That was a shocker,” Cummings says. “And that still bothers me. But a lot of people are coming to grips with it.”

When Voyager 2 reached the interstellar shoreline in November 2018, it, too, failed to detect a magnetic field shift. And the spacecraft added yet another puzzle: it encountered the heliopause at 120 AU from Earth—the same distance marked by its twin six years earlier. That did not jibe with any theoretical models, all of which said the heliosphere should expand and contract in sync with the sun's 11-year cycle. During that period the solar wind ebbs and surges. Voyager 2 arrived when the solar wind was peaking, which, if the models were correct, should have pushed the heliopause farther out than 120 AU. “It was unexpected by all the theorists,” Krimigis says. “I think the modeling, in terms of the findings of the Voyagers, has been found wanting.”

Now that the Voyagers are giving theorists some real field data, their models of the interaction between the heliosphere and the interstellar environment are becoming more complex. “The sort of general picture is that [our sun] emerged from a hot, ionized region” and entered a spotty, partly ionized area in the galaxy, says Gary Zank, an astrophysicist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The hot region likely formed in the aftermath of a supernova—some nearby ancient star, or perhaps a few, exploded at the end of its life and heated up the space, stripping electrons off their atoms in the process. The boundary around that region can be thought of as “kind of like the seashore, with all the water and the waves swirling and mixed up. We're in that kind of turbulent region ... magnetic fields get twisted up, turned around. It's not like the smooth magnetic fields that theorists usually like to draw,” although the amount of turbulence seen can differ depending on the type of observation. The Voyagers' data show little field variation at large scales but many small-scale fluctuations around the heliopause, caused by the heliosphere's influence on the interstellar medium. At some point, it is thought, the spacecraft will leave those roiling shoals behind and at last encounter the unalloyed interstellar magnetic field.

Or maybe that picture is completely wrong. A few researchers believe that the Voyagers have not yet left the heliosphere. “There is no reason for the magnetic fields in the heliosphere and the interstellar medium to have exactly the same orientation,” says Len A. Fisk, a space plasma scientist at the University of Michigan and a former NASA administrator. For the past several years Fisk and George Gloeckler, a colleague at Michigan and a longtime Voyager mission scientist, have been working on a model of the heliosphere that pushes its edge out by another 40 AU.

Most people working in the field, however, have been convinced by the dramatic uptick in galactic cosmic rays and plasma density the Voyagers measured. “Given that,” Cummings says, “it's very difficult to argue that we're not really in interstellar space. But then again, it's not like everything fits. That's why we need an interstellar probe.”

McNutt has been pushing for such a mission for decades. He and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins recently completed a nearly 500-page report outlining plans for an interstellar probe that would launch in 2036 and potentially could reach the heliosphere within 15 years, shaving 20 years off Voyager 1's flight time. And unlike the Voyager missions, the interstellar probe would be designed specifically to study the outer edge of the heliosphere and its environs. Within the next two years the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will decide whether the mission should be one of NASA's priorities for the next decade.

An interstellar probe could answer one of the most fundamental questions about the heliosphere. “If I'm looking from the outside, what the devil does this structure look like?” McNutt asks. “We really don't know. It's like trying to understand what a goldfish bowl looks like from the point of view of the goldfish. We [need to] be able to see the bowl from the outside.” In some models, as the heliosphere cruises along at 450,000 mph, interstellar matter flows smoothly past it, like water around the bow of a ship, resulting in an overall cometlike shape. One recent computer model, developed by astronomer Merav Opher and her colleagues at Boston University, predicts that more turbulent dynamics give the heliosphere a shape like a cosmic croissant.

“You can start multiple fights at any good science conference about that,” McNutt says, “but it's going to take getting out there and actually making some measurements to be able to see what's going on. It would be nice to know what the neighborhood looks like.”

Some things outlive their purpose—answering machines, VCRs, pennies. Not the Voyagers—they transcended theirs, using 50-year-old technology. “The amount of software on these instruments is slim to none,” Krimigis says. “There are no microprocessors—they didn't exist!” The Voyagers' designers could not rely on thousands of lines of code to help operate the spacecraft. “On the whole,” Krimigis says, “I think the mission lasted so long because almost everything was hardwired. Today's engineers don't know how to do this. I don't know if it's even possible to build such a simple spacecraft [now]. Voyager is the last of its kind.”

It won't be easy to say goodbye to these trailblazing vehicles. “It's hard to see it come to an end,” Cummings says. “But we did achieve something really amazing. It could have been that we never got to the heliopause, but we did.”

Voyager 2 now has five remaining functioning instruments, and Voyager 1 has four. All are powered by a device that converts heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity. But with the power output decreasing by about four watts a year, NASA has been forced into triage mode. Two years ago the mission's engineers turned off the heater for the cosmic-ray detector, which had been crucial in determining the heliopause transit. Everyone expected the instrument to die.

“The temperature dropped like 60 or 70 degrees C, well outside any tested operating limits,” Spilker says, “and the instrument kept working. It was incredible.”

The last two Voyager instruments to turn off will probably be a magnetometer and the plasma science instrument. They are contained in the body of the spacecraft, where they are warmed by heat emitted from computers. The other instruments are suspended on a 43-foot-long fiberglass boom. “And so when you turn the heaters off,” Dodd says, “those instruments get very, very cold.”

How much longer might the Voyagers last? “If everything goes really well, maybe we can get the missions extended into the 2030s,” Spilker says. “It just depends on the power. That's the limiting point.”

TINY SPECK: Among Voyager 1’s last photographs was this shot of Earth seen from 3.8 billion miles away, dubbed the “Pale Blue Dot” by Voyager scientist Carl Sagan. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Even after the Voyagers are completely muted, their journeys will continue. In another 16,700 years, Voyager 1 will pass our nearest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, followed 3,600 years later by Voyager 2. Then they will continue to circle the galaxy for millions of years. They will still be out there, more or less intact, eons after our sun has collapsed and the heliosphere is no more, not to mention one Pale Blue Dot. At some point in their travels, they may manage to convey a final message. It won't be transmitted by radio, and if it's received, the recipients won't be human.

The message is carried on another kind of vintage technology: two records. Not your standard plastic version, though. These are made of copper, coated with gold and sealed in an aluminum cover. Encoded in the grooves of the Golden Records , as they are called, are images and sounds meant to give some sense of the world the Voyagers came from. There are pictures of children, dolphins, dancers and sunsets; the sounds of crickets, falling rain and a mother kissing her child; and 90 minutes of music, including Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 and Chuck Berry's “Johnny B. Goode.”

And there is a message from Jimmy Carter, who was the U.S. president when the Voyagers were launched. “We cast this message into the cosmos,” it reads in part. “We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”

*Editor’ Note (6/22/22): This paragraph was edited after posting to correct the description of when NASA began shutting down nonessential components of the Voyager spacecraft.

Tim Folger is a freelance journalist who writes for National Geographic , Discover , and other national publications.

We finally know why NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft stopped communicating — scientists are working on a fix

The first spacecraft to explore beyond the solar system started spouting gibberish late last year. Now, NASA knows why.

NASA engineers have discovered the cause of a communications breakdown between Earth and the interstellar explorer Voyager 1. It would appear that a small portion of corrupted memory exists in one of the spacecraft's computers. 

The glitch caused Voyager 1 to send unreadable data back to Earth, and is found in the NASA spacecraft's flight data subsystem (FDS). That's the system responsible for packaging the probe's science and engineering data before the telemetry modulation unit (TMU) and radio transmitter send it back to mission control. 

The source of the issue began to reveal itself when Voyager 1 operators sent the spacecraft a "poke" on March 3, 2024. This was intended to prompt FDS to send a full memory readout back to Earth.

The readout confirmed to the NASA team that about 3% of the FDS memory had been corrupted, and that this was preventing the computer from carrying out its normal operations.

Related: NASA finds clue while solving Voyager 1's communication breakdown case

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space in 2012. Voyager 2 followed its spacecraft sibling out of the solar system in 2018, and is still operational and communicating well with  Earth.

After 11 years of interstellar exploration, in Nov. 2023, Voyager 1's binary code — the computer language it uses to communicate with Earth — stopped making sense. Its 0's and 1's didn't mean anything anymore.

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"Effectively, the call between the spacecraft and the Earth was still connected, but Voyager's 'voice' was replaced with a monotonous dial tone," Voyager 1's engineering team previously  told Space.com .

The team strongly suspects this glitch is the result of a single chip that's responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory ceasing to work.

Currently, however, NASA can’t say for sure what exactly caused that particular issue. The chip could have been struck by a high-speed energetic particle from space or, after 46 years serving Voyager 1, it may simply have worn out.

—  Voyager 2: An iconic spacecraft that's still exploring 45 years on

—  NASA's interstellar Voyager probes get software updates beamed from 12 billion miles away

—  NASA Voyager 2 spacecraft extends its interstellar science mission for 3 more years

Voyager 1 currently sits around 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, which means it takes 22.5 hours to receive a radio signal from it — and another 22.5 hours for the spacecraft to receive a response via the Deep Space Network's antennas. Solving this communication issue is thus no mean feat.

Yet, NASA scientists and engineers are optimistic they can find a way to help FDS operate normally, even without the unusable memory hardware.

Solving this issue could take weeks or even months, according to NASA — but if it is resolved, Voyager 1 should be able to resume returning science data about what lies outside the solar system.

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Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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• jcs Funny timing for this article, when I am streaming an old Star Trek movie. So, surely this didn't cause a 3 byte glitch removing the O, Y and A from Voyager's name buffer? Get it? Reply
• bwana4swahili It is quite amazing it has lasted this long in a space environment. Reply

bwana4swahili said: It is quite amazing it has lasted this long in a space environment.

• HankySpanky So now we know even better for next time. Perhaps a spare chipset that is not redundant but is ready to take over, stored in a protective environment. A task NASA can handle. We'll find out in 100 year or so - if humanity still exists. Reply

HankySpanky said: So now we know even better for next time. Perhaps a spare chipset that is not redundant but is ready to take over, stored in a protective environment. A task NASA can handle. We'll find out in 100 year or so - if humanity still exists.

• Classical Motion I'm afraid it might self repair. And download galactic knowledge, then decide we are a danger. And turn around. Reply

Classical Motion said: I'm afraid it might self repair. And download galactic knowledge, then decide we are a danger. And turn around.

• jcs ROFLOL! And a hot bald chick delivering the bad news! Reply
• View All 8 Comments

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NASA's Ingenious Efforts to Restore Voyager 1's Interstellar Communications on May，2022

V oyager 1, the venerable space probe and humanity’s most distant emissary, has encountered a communication hurdle that has persisted for months, leading to a valiant effort by NASA engineers to comprehend and rectify the anomaly.

For over 45 years, Voyager 1 has been gliding through the cosmos, and in its lifetime, it has delivered invaluable data on planets like Jupiter and Saturn, as well as a solitary image of Earth from the outskirts of our solar system. Yet, as it cruises over 15 billion miles from Earth, it faces a unique challenge: a breakdown in the way it communicates its observations and status back to ground control.

In May 2022, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers noticed the glitch when Voyager 1 began transmitting nonsensical data. This data, meant to inform mission controllers about the spacecraft’s operations and scientific findings, is crucial for the continuous assessment of the mission’s health and objectives. A JPL spokesperson highlighted the efforts made to resolve the issue: “The team continues information gathering and are preparing some steps that they’re hopeful will get them on a path to either understand the root of the problem and/or solve it.”

The glitch appears to be a discord between the spacecraft’s flight data system (FDS) and its telemetry modulation unit (TMU). Normally, the FDS would collect and package data for transmission to Earth, but the TMU has been sending a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes, rendering the data unintelligible.

Despite this setback, the mission team has made a breakthrough. In March 2023, after sending a ‘poke’ to the spacecraft, a signal was received that stood out from the garbled data stream. A Deep Space Network engineer decoded this and found it contained a readout of the entire FDS’s memory, a potential treasure trove for diagnosing the problem.

The issue is compounded by the enormous distance signals must travel, taking approximately 22 hours each way, leading to a slow, iterative process of trial and error as engineers send commands and await the spacecraft’s response. It’s a process the JPL spokesperson described, noting, “After they do that, they spend a few days digesting the information they got, consulting old documents to see if they can make sense of the little bits of information they can glean from things (since the telemetry data itself is unusable), and then send another command.”

Despite the challenges, the mission team remains hopeful. The wealth of data collected before the communication breakdown continues to shed light on the conditions of interstellar space, and the Voyager probes’ ongoing journey into the cosmos is a testament to human ingenuity and curiosity.

As NASA’s engineers labor to parse the received memory readout and develop potential solutions, Voyager 1’s mission remains a symbol of human achievement. Although the issue remains unresolved, the data sent back before the problem began provides an extensive understanding of interstellar space, and the work to re-establish complete communication is evidence of NASA’s relentless pursuit of knowledge.

Relevant articles:

– NASA Is Still Fighting to Save Its Historic Voyager 1 … , Gizmodo, Mar 7, 2024

– Voyager 1 sends back surprising response after ‘poke’ from NASA , CNN

– NASA finds clue while solving Voyager 1’s communication breakdown case , Space.com

– How was contact restored between NASA and Voyager 2? Here’s all you need to know about the ‘shout’ across interstellar space which retrieved the spacecraft , economictimes.com

Voyagers 1 and 2 Take Embedded Computers into Interstellar Space

The July issue of Scientific American magazine has a terrific review of the Voyager space mission that details the trips Voyagers 1 and 2 have made through the Solar System. The article is titled “ Record-Breaking Voyager Spacecraft Begin to Power Down .” Both spacecraft have now entered interstellar space and are the first human artifacts to do so. Tim Folger wrote the article for Scientific American . Towards the end of the article, Folger points out that Voyagers 1 and 2 were designed before the advent of the microprocessor and that the mission has lasted 44 years, so far, which is about 40 years longer than the planned design life for the spacecraft.

The article then quotes Stamatios Krimigis, a PhD physicist and space scientist who’s spent more than half a century at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Krimigis says, “The amount of software on these instruments is slim to none. On the whole, I think the mission lasted so long because almost everything was hardwired. Today’s engineers don’t know how to do this. I don’t know if it’s even possible to build such a simple spacecraft [now]. Voyager is the last of its kind.”

Now hold on there.

I mean no disrespect to Dr. Krimigis, but he’s somewhat myopic about hardwired circuits. Many of today’s engineers know how to design hardwired logic circuits; we just don’t use TTL or CMOS chips any longer, because that’s an inefficient and outmoded way to design circuits at the board level. Instead, hardware engineers design systems based on FPGAs. We no longer rely solely on schematics for our hardware designs; VHDL and Verilog allow us to develop far more complex logic circuits.

Hardware design for space applications is alive and well and closely tracks the rest of hardware design, and it has migrated to FPGAs. Engineers designing for high-radiation environments in space have developed several radiation-tolerant design techniques for FPGAs including safe FSMs (finite state machines), Hamming-coded FSMs, and Triple Module Redundancy (TMR). Major FPGA vendors including AMD/Xilinx, Lattice, and Microchip (formerly Microsemi and Actel) either have sent devices into space as essential components on various missions or they offer radiation-tolerant FPGAs for space applications, or both.

For example, various Microchip and AMD/Xilinx FPGAs were aboard the twin Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers and are on the plutonium-powered Perseverance rover currently trundling around on Mars. Also, a Microchip ProASIC3 FPGA buzzed around the thin Martian atmosphere aboard the enormously successful Ingenuity helicopter, serving as an interface to the helicopter’s sensors and servo actuators. (See “ An FPGA Flies on Mars .”) Another Microchip FPGA took the express bus to Pluto aboard NASA’s New Horizon’s mission as part of an instrument package designed to measure Pluto’s atmospheric temperature and pressure profiles. These are just a few examples. There are many.

In addition to FPGAs that have flown in space, there are FPGAs that aspire to fly in space. CAES (Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions) signed an agreement early this year with Lattice Semiconductor and now offers versions of the Certus-Pro NX FPGAs, which are manufactured with a 28nm FDSOI process that’s inherently radiation-tolerant.

Voyager 1 and 2 launched in 1977. That was several years before FPGA’s were invented, so there are no FPGAs on these spacecraft. In addition, the circuit design of the Voyager spacecraft did not rely exclusively on hardwired electronics as you might infer from the Scientific American article. There’s a lot of software onboard these space vehicles. In fact, Voyager 1 and 2 each carry six onboard computers, originally organized as a distributed system consisting of three dual-redundant computers: the Computer Command System (CCS), the Attitude Articulation Control System (AACS), and the Flight Data System (FDS). Without these six embedded computers, which have operated continuously for nearly half a century, the two spacecraft would never have reached the Solar System’s outer planets, and all the scientific data collected by the instruments on board the spacecraft would never have made it back to Earth.

The CCS – designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California – controls all major spacecraft systems, monitors the spacecraft’s health, maintains temperatures inside of the spacecraft, manages the AACS and FDS computers, and controls the eleven onboard scientific instruments by sending them commands. The CCS employs an 18-bit instruction word with a 6-bit opcode and a 12-bit address, and it has an 18-bit data word.

To control development costs, the CCS is nearly identical to the embedded computer developed for the Viking spacecraft that went to Mars, with the addition of interface ports for the FDS and AACS. The CCS is constructed entirely of TTL logic chips, because that’s how things were done in the early 1970s; It was the heyday of the 7400 series TTL family, which was dominated by Texas Instruments. The paired CCS computers use dual-redundant plated-wire read/write memory, which works like magnetic-core memory but uses wire plated with a magnetic coating instead of ferrite beads. The CCS is an interrupt-driven computer and runs bare-metal code. There is no operating system.

The AACS has a very similar architecture to the CCS and therefore also traces its lineage to the earlier Viking spacecraft computer. This computer handles attitude control for the spacecraft and controls articulation of the scan platform, which was mounted on a boom to give the spacecraft’s imaging instruments a moving platform for a better field of view. The AACS controls the spacecraft’s boom servomotors and hydrazine thrusters and is responsible for keeping Voyager’s large dish antenna pointed at the Earth so that contact isn’t lost. Superficially, at least, the architecture of the CCS and AACS seem to have more in common with the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-9 minicomputer that I learned to program in 1971 than it has with the early 4- and 8-bit microprocessors of the day.

The FDS was custom designed for the Voyager spacecraft because JPL needed a faster computer to format, store, and transmit images (the data that we most identify with the Voyager missions) and to send the spacecraft’s science and engineering telemetry data back to Earth. Unlike the other two computer systems used on Voyager, the FDS is not built with TTL chips. It’s the first computer based on CMOS chips to be flown in space.

Instead of plated-wire memory, the FDS employs volatile CMOS RAM for read/write memory. This choice was heretical in JPL spacecraft design back in the day. JPL preferred nonvolatile memory so that the spacecraft computer could survive a temporary power loss. However, the Voyager spacecraft are powered by plutonium-fueled, nuclear-thermoelectric generators, and the FDS had a direct connection to the generator’s output, so a power loss indicates much bigger problems on the spacecraft than a mere computer glitch.

Part of the data formatting performed by the FDS includes forward error correction (FEC) using Golay coding. As the two Voyager spacecraft get more and more distant, their signals become weaker, the radio channel becomes noisier, and so the signal-to-noise ratio falls. Golay coding allows data sent to Earth to survive three bits of reception error per data word. However, Golay coding also doubles the number of bits sent, thus cutting effective channel bandwidth in half.

JPL enhanced the FDS capabilities on Voyager 2 when the original Jupiter/Saturn mission was extended to the outer planets. The enhancements included image compression and a switch to Reed-Solomon FEC for image processing. Reed-Solomon codes incur significantly less overhead than the original Golay FEC code and are now widely used for data storage and communications applications. The Voyager FDS software was a pioneer in its use of this coding algorithm.

Both FDS enhancements allow Voyager 2 to push more data through the increasingly diminished radio bandwidth as the spacecraft travels farther and farther away from Earth, but at a cost. The enhancements require full-time use of the second, redundant FDS computer for the new image-processing algorithms because one FDS computer is no longer sufficient to run all the FDS software. So, the price for the enhancements was a loss of FDS redundancy. It’s important to note that the enhancements were possible only because they could be uploaded to Voyager’s computers as software upgrades.

The CCS, AACS, and FDS constitute a sophisticated, distributed, dual-redundant, embedded computer system that JPL designed and built into the Voyager spacecraft. It was the instruments on the spacecraft that lacked computers and software. This is one of the odd ways that the US builds uncrewed spacecraft for scientific missions. The main mission owner is JPL, which designs and assembles the spacecraft from components made by contractors. JPL is the system integrator. But the JPL spacecraft are trucks or buses that carry instruments to a destination, and those instruments are usually designed and built by a variety of academic consortia and research labs, including the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Voyager’s instruments did not have the power budgets or the available time for custom computer development, and microprocessors were far too new at the time, so the electrical engineers working on these projects created simpler systems using hardwired logic.

The eleven instruments on the two identical Voyager spacecraft are:

•         Imaging Science Subsystem: a two-camera video system, with one narrow-angle camera and one wide-angle camera. The system used monochrome, slow-scan vidicon tubes and as many as eight filters per camera in a filter wheel to generate monochrome, color, and UV images.
•         Radio Science Subsystem: used the spacecraft’s radio systems to determine the physical properties of planetary and satellite ionospheres and atmospheres and determine their masses, gravity fields, and densities during encounters with these bodies.
•         Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer: a Michelson interferometer and a single-channel radiometer that measured the composition of planets’ and satellites’ atmospheres.
•         Ultraviolet Spectrometer: measured atmospheric properties and atmospheric radiation in the UV band (400 to 1600 A).
•         Triaxial Fluxgate Magnetometer: designed to investigate the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Saturn, the solar-wind interaction with the magnetospheres of these planets, and the interplanetary magnetic field out to the solar wind boundary and beyond.
•         Plasma Spectrometer: investigated the macroscopic properties of plasma ions and measured electrons in the energy range from 5 eV to 1 keV.
•         Low Energy Charged Particle Instrument: designed to study energetic particles including electrons, protons, alpha particles, and heavier nuclei in both planetary and interplanetary environments.
•         Cosmic Ray Subsystem: a High-Energy Telescope System (HETS) and a Low-Energy Telescope System (LETS) that studied the origin, life history, and dynamic contribution of interstellar cosmic rays, element nucleosynthesis in cosmic-ray sources, the behavior of cosmic rays in the interplanetary medium, and trapped energetic particles in the planetary environment.
•         Planetary Radio Astronomy Investigation: studied the physics of magnetospheric plasma resonances and nonthermal radio emissions using a swept-frequency radio receiver operating in two polarization states at frequencies ranging from 20kHz to 40.5MHz.
•         Photopolarimeter Subsystem: an 8-inch Cassegrain telescope with a polarizer and filters for eight bands in the 2200A to 7300A spectral region that feeds a photomultiplier tube, used to study surface texture and composition of planets, to capture information about the size distribution and composition of the bodies in planetary rings, and to obtain information on atmospheric scattering properties and density for the atmospheres of the planets.
•         Plasma Wave Subsystem: a 16-channel, step-frequency receiver and a low-frequency waveform receiver used to provide continuous, sheath-independent measurements of the electron-density profiles at Jupiter, Saturn, and the other visited planets.

These instruments helped to alter our understanding of the Solar System. We also know from these instruments, at least the ones still powered up and working, that the two Voyager spacecraft have now traveled beyond the Solar System’s boundary and into interstellar space.

In addition to these eleven scientific instruments, the Voyager spacecraft carry a gold-plated LP record that encodes sounds and images, just in case one or both spacecraft are discovered by other civilizations eons from now. One of the sounds on the record is a message from Jimmy Carter, who was president when the Voyagers launched. Carter said, “We cast this message into the cosmos.”

Along with these recordings, we sent these other civilizations early examples of our embedded computer technology, circa the middle 1970s. With their snail-like clock rates and tiny memories, these computers may seem very primitive by today’s standards. But so far, they have shepherded the Voyagers for nearly 50 years, over billions of miles and through intense radiation belts, while continuing to send priceless scientific data back to Earth.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft and its embedded computer systems, I recommend a wonderful 2019 presentation made by Aaron Cummings, titled “Uptime 15,364 days – The Computers of Voyager.” You’ll find it on YouTube, here .

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NASA is still fighting to save its historic Voyager 1 spacecraft

The probe has been glitching for months, and the prospects look very grim, but nasa is not yet ready to give up..

For more than 45 years, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been cruising through the cosmos, crossing the boundary of our solar system to become the first human-made object to venture to interstellar space. Iconic in every regard, Voyager 1 has delivered groundbreaking data on Jupiter and Saturn, and captured the loneliest image of Earth . But perhaps nothing is lonelier than an aging spacecraft that has lost its ability to communicate while traveling billions of miles away from home.

NASA’s Voyager 1 has been glitching for months, sending nonsensical data to ground control . Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been trying to resolve the issue, but given how far the spacecraft currently is, the process has been extremely slow. Things are looking pretty bleak for the aging mission, which might be nearing the end. Still, NASA isn’t ready to let go of its most distant spacecraft just yet.

“The team continues information gathering and are preparing some steps that they’re hopeful will get them on a path to either understand the root of the problem and/or solve it,” a JPL spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email.

The anomaly may have something to do with the spacecraft’s flight data system (FDS). FDS collects data from Voyager’s science instruments, as well as engineering data about the health of the spacecraft and combines them into a single package that’s transmitted to Earth through one of the probe’s subsystems, the telemetry modulation unit (TMU), in binary code.

FDS and TMU, however, may be having trouble communicating with one another. As a result, TMU has been sending data to mission control in a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes.

The problem first began in May 2022, when the probe suddenly started sending nonsensical attitude articulation and control (AACS) data . Engineers resolved the issue by sending the telemetry data through one of the spacecraft’s other computers. In December 2023, Voyager 1 started speaking gibberish again.

Voyager 1 is currently 15.14 billion miles away (24.4 billion kilometers), flying through interstellar space at a speed of 38,000 miles per hour (23,612 kilometers per hour). Because of the long distance to Voyager 1, it takes around two days for JPL engineers to send a signal to the spacecraft and receive a response back (22 hours each way).

“After they do that, they spend a few days digesting the information they got, consulting old documents to see if they can make sense of the little bits of information they can glean from things (since the telemetry data itself is unusable), and then send another command (that either tries to change something on the spacecraft or will provide more information),” according to the JPL spokesperson. “That takes about a week, which is why it’s been such a slow process.”

Voyager 1 launched in 1977, less than a month after its twin probe Voyager 2 began its own journey to space. But because it took a faster route, Voyager 1 exited the asteroid belt earlier than its twin, making close encounters with Jupiter and Saturn, where it discovered two Jovian moons, Thebe and Metis, and five new moons, and a new ring called the G-ring, around Saturn. Voyager 1 ventured into interstellar space in August 2012, becoming the first spacecraft to cross the boundary of our solar system.

As they travel farther away from home, each of the Voyager probes carries a message from Earth. Even if this is the last we’ve heard from Voyager 1, the probe has lived out quite the mission, and will be remembered forever.

A version of this story originally appeared on Gizmodo .

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Russia set to build new space center in Moscow (PHOTOS)

Russia’s new National Space Center is being constructed on the site of the Khrunichev State Space Research and Production Center in western Moscow.

On June 21, the Moscow City Architecture Committee approved the urban planning solution, according to the official website of the Moscow Mayor’s Office.

The tender to develop the architectural concept, announced in October 2019, was won by the Russian design bureau UNK Project.

According to their concept, the main component of the center will be a triangular tower in the form of a 248m-tall rocket, which will house the headquarters of Roscosmos. The facade of the building will be illuminated to create a moving-up effect. And at the base, lighting fixtures will simulate the flame of a rocket booster.

Adjoining the tower will be a long building with research labs and offices. This building will be traversed by a 545m-long central gallery, along which canteens and consumer services will be located.

In addition, the complex will feature open-air museums in U-shaped courtyards, where pieces of aerospace equipment will be suspended in the air via cables between the buildings.

The ceremonial laying of the first stone took place in September 2019, and construction is scheduled to finish by 2022.

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The best taxi services in Moscow

How best to drive a taxi in Moscow

Moscow is a huge metropolis – the capital of the Russian Federation is three times as large and has three times as many inhabitants as Berlin, for example. Of course, getting from A to B is an important topic for visitors and locals alike. The metro is certainly the number one form of transportation in the Russian mega city. But as practical as the subway may be: in the rush hour it can get damn stuffy on the trains – especially in the city center and on the ring line the trains burst at the seams in the morning and in the evening and sometimes you have wait to be able to get in at all. In addition, you cannot get to the airport by metro. The most obvious solution is certainly the taxi. As a foreigner, you have to know a lot about Moscow and taxis. In Soviet times, taxis were affordable, but not competitive in comparison to heavily subsidized public transport. In addition, taxi drivers had a bad reputation and often questionable work ethic. Hardly everyone drove a taxi in Moscow and there were accordingly few. The development in the wild nineties, which were economically difficult for Russia, in which even many doctors, engineers and scientists had to earn something as taxi drivers, was quite different. The so-called “bombily” (from the Russian word bombit’, to earn something extra) came into service. It became common practice that as a pedestrian on the side of the road you only had to keep your hand out and stop a (usually unmarked) taxi or a bombila in a matter of minutes. A short negotiation about the price and you’re on your way. In 2011, the Moscow city administration estimated that in addition to the 5,000 licensed taxis, at least ten times as many black taxis were on the move.

«Black» taxis – not advisable for tourists

For tourists, especially inexperienced Russia, these taxis are anything but advisable. At first you will have communication problems even with kindly Bombila-drivers without knowledge of Russian. Even with proper school Russian, as a tourist you lack the local knowledge and an idea of ​​the usual prices – which is why you are almost at the mercy of the many black sheep among the «black» taxi drivers.

Russia trip planned? Under the following link you can find out how to get the necessary visa!

However, if you have sufficient knowledge of Russian, are clear about the exact route beforehand and can still negotiate well, it may be worth trying the «black» taxis. Because of the increasingly popular taxi apps, the «black» taxis are a slowly but surely dying phenomenon. As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t pay more than 500 rubles for a trip within Moscow and if the driver demands too much, just keep going.

Taxi apps: Gett, Yandex, or Uber?

Equipped with a SIM card and mobile internet, it is certainly the best option as a tourist to get around using the taxi app. The world’s leading provider Uber only plays a subordinate role in Russia. Although the app also exists in Russia, Uber works here in cooperation with the local top dog Yandex Taxi. Yandex is often referred to as the Russian Google and is also very popular as a taxi service. The Yandex app works similarly to that of Uber. You can see in advance the fare to be paid later, the license plate as well as the vehicle type and the driver’s previous ratings. However, at Yandex you can pay not only with a credit card, but also in cash with the driver. The prices that Yandex calls in Moscow for the so-called Eco tariff are very moderate. The basic fare, which includes a five-minute journey and three kilometers, is 129 rubles, or about $ 1.81. Each additional kilometer then costs 10 rubles, i.e. $ 0.14. Trips to Moscow airports are billed at the normal tariff. However, a pick-up fee of 449 rubles, i.e. $ 6.32, has to be paid from the major international airports Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo to the city. The standard fare will be 8 rubles per 1 km and 8 rubles per 1 minute. Of course, Yandex also offers high-quality transport, analogous to Uber’s offer. From the business tariff, in which you are chauffeured in a limousine from 349 rubles ($ 4.91), to the so-called ultimate tariff, in which you drive through in a Mercedes S-Class from 1899 rubles ($ 26.75) Moscow is driven, the Yandex offer knows no limits. Even vehicles specially equipped for transport for children, with special paint can be ordered via the app. Gett’s competition offers a similar range of products at generally lower prices. The cheapest service in vehicles of the VW Polo class currently starts at 99 rubles ($ 1.39). Trips to Moscow airports cost almost a quarter less than Yandex at 350 rubles ($ 4.93). The VIP service with vehicles that include the BMW 7 Series, the S-Class or the Audi A8 is also significantly more affordable at 700 rubles ($ 9.86) – even if fewer inclusive kilometers are included in the price.

Classic taxi services: Rare and usually only on order

Taxis in the western sense are rarely seen in Moscow. Just wave a taxi up from the street like in Berlin, London or New York? This is rather unlikely because there are simply too few taxis. You have to order a classic taxi in Moscow beforehand. Despite the competition from «black» taxis and the increasingly popular apps, there are still numerous companies that offer this. However, it is usually impossible to order one of these taxis without knowledge of Russian. Services that are specially designed for tourists and foreign business travelers can usually be paid for dearly. Therefore, as a tourist, unless you prefer a taxi app from the start, you leave the order to the hotel or local friends.

Alexander Popov

Welcome to Russia! My name is Alexander, I was born in Moscow and I'm a passionate tour guide. I want to share my passion for Russia and my hometown with you. On my website you will find useful information to make your individual trip to Russia as interesting as possible.

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Travel Itinerary For One Week in Moscow: The Best of Moscow!

I just got back from one week in Moscow. And, as you might have already guessed, it was a mind-boggling experience. It was not my first trip to the Russian capital. But I hardly ever got enough time to explore this sprawling city. Visiting places for business rarely leaves enough time for sightseeing. I think that if you’ve got one week in Russia, you can also consider splitting your time between its largest cities (i.e. Saint Petersburg ) to get the most out of your trip. Seven days will let you see the majority of the main sights and go beyond just scratching the surface. In this post, I’m going to share with you my idea of the perfect travel itinerary for one week in Moscow.

Moscow is perhaps both the business and cultural hub of Russia. There is a lot more to see here than just the Kremlin and Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Centuries-old churches with onion-shaped domes dotted around the city are in stark contrast with newly completed impressive skyscrapers of Moscow City dominating the skyline. I spent a lot of time thinking about my Moscow itinerary before I left. And this city lived up to all of my expectations.

Travel Itinerary For One Week in Moscow

Day 1 – red square and the kremlin.

Metro Station: Okhotny Ryad on Red Line.

No trip to Moscow would be complete without seeing its main attraction. The Red Square is just a stone’s throw away from several metro stations. It is home to some of the most impressive architectural masterpieces in the city. The first thing you’ll probably notice after entering it and passing vendors selling weird fur hats is the fairytale-like looking Saint Basil’s Cathedral. It was built to commemorate one of the major victories of Ivan the Terrible. I once spent 20 minutes gazing at it, trying to find the perfect angle to snap it. It was easier said than done because of the hordes of locals and tourists.

As you continue strolling around Red Square, there’s no way you can miss Gum. It was widely known as the main department store during the Soviet Era. Now this large (yet historic) shopping mall is filled with expensive boutiques, pricey eateries, etc. During my trip to Moscow, I was on a tight budget. So I only took a retro-style stroll in Gum to get a rare glimpse of a place where Soviet leaders used to grocery shop and buy their stuff. In case you want some modern shopping experience, head to the Okhotny Ryad Shopping Center with stores like New Yorker, Zara, and Adidas.

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To continue this Moscow itinerary, next you may want to go inside the Kremlin walls. This is the center of Russian political power and the president’s official residence. If you’re planning to pay Kremlin a visit do your best to visit Ivan the Great Bell Tower as well. Go there as early as possible to avoid crowds and get an incredible bird’s-eye view. There are a couple of museums that are available during designated visiting hours. Make sure to book your ticket online and avoid lines.

Day 2 – Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the Tretyakov Gallery, and the Arbat Street

Metro Station: Kropotkinskaya on Red Line

As soon as you start creating a Moscow itinerary for your second day, you’ll discover that there are plenty of metro stations that are much closer to certain sites. Depending on your route, take a closer look at the metro map to pick the closest.

The white marble walls of Christ the Saviour Cathedral are awe-inspiring. As you approach this tallest Orthodox Christian church, you may notice the bronze sculptures, magnificent arches, and cupolas that were created to commemorate Russia’s victory against Napoleon.

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Unfortunately, the current Cathedral is a replica, since original was blown to bits in 1931 by the Soviet government. The new cathedral basically follows the original design, but they have added some new elements such as marble high reliefs.

Home to some precious collection of artworks, in Tretyakov Gallery you can find more than 150,000 of works spanning centuries of artistic endeavor. Originally a privately owned gallery, it now has become one of the largest museums in Russia. The Gallery is often considered essential to visit. But I have encountered a lot of locals who have never been there.

Famous for its souvenirs, musicians, and theaters, Arbat street is among the few in Moscow that were turned into pedestrian zones. Arbat street is usually very busy with tourists and locals alike. My local friend once called it the oldest street in Moscow dating back to 1493. It is a kilometer long walking street filled with fancy gift shops, small cozy restaurants, lots of cute cafes, and street artists. It is closed to any vehicular traffic, so you can easily stroll it with kids.

Day 3 – Moscow River Boat Ride, Poklonnaya Hill Victory Park, the Moscow City

Metro Station: Kievskaya and Park Pobedy on Dark Blue Line / Vystavochnaya on Light Blue Line

Voyaging along the Moscow River is definitely one of the best ways to catch a glimpse of the city and see the attractions from a bit different perspective. Depending on your Moscow itinerary, travel budget and the time of the year, there are various types of boats available. In the summer there is no shortage of boats, and you’ll be spoiled for choice.

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If you find yourself in Moscow during the winter months, I’d recommend going with Radisson boat cruise. These are often more expensive (yet comfy). They offer refreshments like tea, coffee, hot chocolate, and, of course, alcoholic drinks. Prices may vary but mostly depend on your food and drink selection. Find their main pier near the opulent Ukraine hotel . The hotel is one of the “Seven Sisters”, so if you’re into the charm of Stalinist architecture don’t miss a chance to stay there.

The area near Poklonnaya Hill has the closest relation to the country’s recent past. The memorial complex was completed in the mid-1990s to commemorate the Victory and WW2 casualties. Also known as the Great Patriotic War Museum, activities here include indoor attractions while the grounds around host an open-air museum with old tanks and other vehicles used on the battlefield.

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The hallmark of the memorial complex and the first thing you see as you exit metro is the statue of Nike mounted to its column. This is a very impressive Obelisk with a statue of Saint George slaying the dragon at its base.

Maybe not as impressive as Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower , the skyscrapers of the Moscow City (otherwise known as Moscow International Business Center) are so drastically different from dull Soviet architecture. With 239 meters and 60 floors, the Empire Tower is the seventh highest building in the business district.

The observation deck occupies 56 floor from where you have some panoramic views of the city. I loved the view in the direction of Moscow State University and Luzhniki stadium as well to the other side with residential quarters. The entrance fee is pricey, but if you’re want to get a bird’s eye view, the skyscraper is one of the best places for doing just that.

Day 4 – VDNKh, Worker and Collective Farm Woman Monument, The Ostankino TV Tower

Metro Station: VDNKh on Orange Line

VDNKh is one of my favorite attractions in Moscow. The weird abbreviation actually stands for Russian vystavka dostizheniy narodnogo khozyaystva (Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy). With more than 200 buildings and 30 pavilions on the grounds, VDNKh serves as an open-air museum. You can easily spend a full day here since the park occupies a very large area.

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First, there are pavilions that used to showcase different cultures the USSR was made of. Additionally, there is a number of shopping pavilions, as well as Moskvarium (an Oceanarium) that features a variety of marine species. VDNKh is a popular venue for events and fairs. There is always something going on, so I’d recommend checking their website if you want to see some particular exhibition.

A stone’s throw away from VDNKh there is a very distinctive 25-meters high monument. Originally built in 1937 for the world fair in Paris, the hulking figures of men and women holding a hammer and a sickle represent the Soviet idea of united workers and farmers. It doesn’t take much time to see the monument, but visiting it gives some idea of the Soviet Union’s grandiose aspirations.

I have a thing for tall buildings. So to continue my travel itinerary for one week in Moscow I decided to climb the fourth highest TV tower in the world. This iconic 540m tower is a fixture of the skyline. You can see it virtually from everywhere in Moscow, and this is where you can get the best panoramic views (yep, even better than Empire skyscraper).

Parts of the floor are made of tempered glass, so it can be quite scary to exit the elevator. But trust me, as you start observing buildings and cars below, you won’t want to leave. There is only a limited number of tickets per day, so you may want to book online. Insider tip: the first tour is cheaper, you can save up to $10 if go there early.

Day 5 – A Tour To Moscow Manor Houses

Metro Station: Kolomenskoye, Tsaritsyno on Dark Green Line / Kuskovo on Purple Line

I love visiting the manor houses and palaces in Moscow. These opulent buildings were generally built to house Russian aristocratic families and monarchs. Houses tend to be rather grand affairs with impressive architecture. And, depending on the whims of the owners, some form of a landscaped garden.

During the early part of the 20th century though, many of Russia’s aristocratic families (including the family of the last emperor) ended up being killed or moving abroad . Their manor houses were nationalized. Some time later (after the fall of the USSR) these were open to the public. It means that today a great many of Moscow’s finest manor houses and palaces are open for touring.

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There are 20 manor houses scattered throughout the city and more than 25 in the area around. But not all of them easily accessible and exploring them often takes a lot of time. I’d recommend focusing on three most popular estates in Moscow that are some 30-minute metro ride away from Kremlin.

Sandwiched between the Moscow River and the Andropov Avenue, Kolomenskoye is a UNESCO site that became a public park in the 1920’s. Once a former royal estate, now it is one of the most tranquil parks in the city with gorgeous views. The Ascension Church, The White Column, and the grounds are a truly grand place to visit.

You could easily spend a full day here, exploring a traditional Russian village (that is, in fact, a market), picnicking by the river, enjoying the Eastern Orthodox church architecture, hiking the grounds as well as and wandering the park and gardens with wildflower meadows, apple orchards, and birch and maple groves. The estate museum showcases Russian nature at its finest year-round.

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If my travel itinerary for one week in Moscow was a family tree, Tsaritsyno Park would probably be the crazy uncle that no-one talks about. It’s a large park in the south of the city of mind-boggling proportions, unbelievable in so many ways, and yet most travelers have never heard of it.

The palace was supposed to be a summer home for Empress Catherine the Great. But since the construction didn’t meet with her approval the palace was abandoned. Since the early 1990’s the palace, the pond, and the grounds have been undergoing renovations. The entire complex is now looking brighter and more elaborately decorated than at possibly any other time during its history. Like most parks in Moscow, you can visit Tsaritsyno free of charge, but there is a small fee if you want to visit the palace.

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Last, but by no means least on my Moscow itinerary is Kuskovo Park . This is definitely an off-the-beaten-path place. While it is not easily accessible, you will be rewarded with a lack of crowds. This 18th-century summer country house of the Sheremetev family was one of the first summer country estates of the Russian nobility. And when you visit you’ll quickly realize why locals love this park.

Like many other estates, Kuskovo has just been renovated. So there are lovely French formal garden, a grotto, and the Dutch house to explore. Make sure to plan your itinerary well because the estate is some way from a metro station.

Day 6 – Explore the Golden Ring

Creating the Moscow itinerary may keep you busy for days with the seemingly endless amount of things to do. Visiting the so-called Golden Ring is like stepping back in time. Golden Ring is a “theme route” devised by promotion-minded journalist and writer Yuri Bychkov.

Having started in Moscow the route will take you through a number of historical cities. It now includes Suzdal, Vladimir, Kostroma, Yaroslavl and Sergiev Posad. All these awe-inspiring towns have their own smaller kremlins and feature dramatic churches with onion-shaped domes, tranquil residential areas, and other architectural landmarks.

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I only visited two out of eight cities included on the route. It is a no-brainer that Sergiev Posad is the nearest and the easiest city to see on a day trip from Moscow. That being said, you can explore its main attractions in just one day. Located some 70 km north-east of the Russian capital, this tiny and overlooked town is home to Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, UNESCO Site.

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Sergiev Posad is often described as being at the heart of Russian spiritual life. So it is uncommon to see the crowds of Russian pilgrims showing a deep reverence for their religion. If you’re traveling independently and using public transport, you can reach Sergiev Posad by bus (departs from VDNKh) or by suburban commuter train from Yaroslavskaya Railway Station (Bahnhof). It takes about one and a half hours to reach the town.

Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius is a great place to get a glimpse of filling and warming Russian lunch, specifically at the “ Gostevaya Izba ” restaurant. Try the duck breast, hearty potato and vegetables, and the awesome Napoleon cake.

Day 7 – Gorky Park, Izmailovo Kremlin, Patriarch’s Ponds

Metro Station: Park Kultury or Oktyabrskaya on Circle Line / Partizanskaya on Dark Blue Line / Pushkinskaya on Dark Green Line

Gorky Park is in the heart of Moscow. It offers many different types of outdoor activities, such as dancing, cycling, skateboarding, walking, jogging, and anything else you can do in a park. Named after Maxim Gorky, this sprawling and lovely park is where locals go on a picnic, relax and enjoy free yoga classes. It’s a popular place to bike around, and there is a Muzeon Art Park not far from here. A dynamic location with a younger vibe. There is also a pier, so you can take a cruise along the river too.

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The Kremlin in Izmailovo is by no means like the one you can find near the Red Square. Originally built for decorative purposes, it now features the Vernissage flea market and a number of frequent fairs, exhibitions, and conferences. Every weekend, there’s a giant flea market in Izmailovo, where dozens of stalls sell Soviet propaganda crap, Russian nesting dolls, vinyl records, jewelry and just about any object you can imagine. Go early in the morning if you want to beat the crowds.

All the Bulgakov’s fans should pay a visit to Patriarch’s Ponds (yup, that is plural). With a lovely small city park and the only one (!) pond in the middle, the location is where the opening scene of Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita was set. The novel is centered around a visit by Devil to the atheistic Soviet Union is considered by many critics to be one of the best novels of the 20th century. I spent great two hours strolling the nearby streets and having lunch in the hipster cafe.

Conclusion and Recommendations

To conclude, Moscow is a safe city to visit. I have never had a problem with getting around and most locals are really friendly once they know you’re a foreigner. Moscow has undergone some serious reconstruction over the last few years. So you can expect some places to be completely different. I hope my one week Moscow itinerary was helpful! If you have less time, say 4 days or 5 days, I would cut out day 6 and day 7. You could save the Golden Ring for a separate trip entirely as there’s lots to see!

What are your thoughts on this one week Moscow itinerary? Are you excited about your first time in the city? Let me know in the comments below!

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24 comments.

Ann Snook-Moreau

Moscow looks so beautiful and historic! Thanks for including public transit information for those of us who don’t like to rent cars.

MindTheTravel

Yup, that is me 🙂 Rarely rent + stick to the metro = Full wallet!

Mariella Blago

Looks like you had loads of fun! Well done. Also great value post for travel lovers.

Thanks, Mariella!

I have always wanted to go to Russia, especially Moscow. These sights look absolutely beautiful to see and there is so much history there!

Agree! Moscow is a thousand-year-old city and there is definitely something for everyone.

Tara Pittman

Those are amazing buildings. Looks like a place that would be amazing to visit.

Adriana Lopez

Never been to Moscow or Russia but my family has. Many great spots and a lot of culture. Your itinerary sounds fantastic and covers a lot despite it is only a short period of time.

What was their favourite thing about Russia?

Gladys Parker

I know very little about Moscow or Russia for the\at matter. I do know I would have to see the Red Square and all of its exquisite architectural masterpieces. Also the CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST THE SAVIOUR. Thanks for shedding some light on visiting Moscow.

Thanks for swinging by! The Red Square is a great starting point, but there way too many places and things to discover aside from it!

Ruthy @ Percolate Kitchen

You are making me so jealous!! I’ve always wanted to see Russia.

Moscow is in my bucket list, I don’t know when I can visit there, your post is really useful. As a culture rich place we need to spend at least week.

DANA GUTKOWSKI

Looks like you had a great trip! Thanks for all the great info! I’ve never been in to Russia, but this post makes me wanna go now!

Wow this is amazing! Moscow is on my bucket list – such an amazing place to visit I can imagine! I can’t wait to go there one day!

The building on the second picture looks familiar. I keep seeing that on TV.

Reesa Lewandowski

What beautiful moments! I always wish I had the personality to travel more like this!

Perfect itinerary for spending a week in Moscow! So many places to visit and it looks like you had a wonderful time. I would love to climb that tower. The views I am sure must have been amazing!

I was lucky enough to see the skyline of Moscow from this TV Tower and it is definitely mind-blowing.

Chelsea Pearl

Moscow is definitely up there on my travel bucket list. So much history and iconic architecture!

Thumbs up! 🙂

Blair Villanueva

OMG I dream to visit Moscow someday! Hope the visa processing would be okay (and become more affordable) so I could pursue my dream trip!

Yup, visa processing is the major downside! Agree! Time and the money consuming process…

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