Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have conserved energy supplies on the record-setting Voyager 1 & 2 deep space probes nearly 50 years after their missions launched to extend them further.

The plutonium, a radioactive metal that is a byproduct ... Getting rid of the waste would involve baking it into a rock-like ...

NASA launched the probes in 1977, which rely on a diminishing radioisotope power system that uses the heat from decaying plutonium to generate ... have been deep space rock stars since launch ...