BUILT TO LAST: NASA’s Voyager 2 endures technical hiccup at 11.5 billion miles away.

It’s a challenge to diagnose and fix problems on the twin probes due to their sheer distance from Earth. Voyager 2 is located about 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion kilometers) away.

“Communications traveling at the speed of light take about 17 hours to reach the spacecraft, and it takes another 17 hours for a response from the spacecraft to return to Earth,” NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.

Voyager 2 launched in 1977. It has shown remarkable resilience despite the great distance it has covered. The spacecraft’s power availability shrinks a little every year, but it is still gathering data to help scientists learn about what’s happening at the edge of our solar system.

So far, it looks like Voyager 2’s safety systems worked as designed and that it should be able to continue its epic journey into the cosmos.

With hands-on maintenance, a car might go 250,000 miles.