PASADENA, CA—Confirming that several components had broken off the craft and that most of its scientific instruments were no longer operational, officials from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that Voyager 1, the pioneering space probe launched in 1977, had been severely damaged Thursday after crashing into the end of the universe. “It appears that, at approximately 8:20 this morning, Voyager struck the edge of the universe head-on at a speed of 38,000 miles per hour, resulting in significant structural damage to the spacecraft,” said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone, noting that the force of the impact with the outer border of the cosmos had bent the probe’s main antenna dish and completely snapped off its low-field magnetometer. “While we’re receiving only intermittent signals from Voyager now, incoming data indicate that, in addition to nearly totaling the craft’s thermoelectric generator, the collision left a significant dent in the end of the universe as well.” JPL scientists added that Voyager 1 now appears to be moving laterally, scraping its left side along the universe’s outer edge, and that it is expected to continue doing so for the next 50 or 60 years until the remaining fragments of the probe eventually come to rest in the bottom-right corner of outer space.

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