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the_fungible_man t1_j2cbm09 wrote

>Most of these probes have defied their expected deaths...

Nonsense, but par for the course with space.com.

No one expected New Horizons to be kaput by 2022.

And since it's been known for some time that the Voyagers' RTG power loss wouldn't become critical before 2025, no one really expected them to have "died" just yet either.

Nearly every interplanetary NASA probe has exceeded its original planned mission duration, sometimes by years, sometimes by decades. They rarely succumb to component failure, most often reaching their end-of-life due to power or propellant exhaustion.

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DamianFullyReversed t1_j2d5j21 wrote

Agreed. Probes are over engineered for this (makes sense, you don’t want to spend so much on something that’ll just break down and become useless), so they’re gonna last. :)

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