: Why haven’t we sent more deep space craft like Voyager 2 out? Technology has become much better over the years, so why haven’t there been new a long distance deep space craft?
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Time, money, and interest.
There have beeen some other deep space craft (notibly New Horizons).
They are extremely expensive. New Horizon cost $565 million just to make and launch. Another $215 million to run the operations center while it is travelling and operating. NASA has a limited budget and has to prioritize what it will do and when.
Part of the problem is that while we get a lot of information from these craft, most of it is completely academic. I just want to say that I completely support spending money on these projects, but it is still a consideration when it comes to justifying budget amounts for government spending. For a lot of the public, I don’t think your going to get a lot of support if you asked “Would you be willing to spend nearly $1 billion tax dollars so we can take a better picture of Pluto?”. The mission gathered far more than just that. But I guarantee you that’s the only result the majority of the public has seen.
A lot more effort has been made into sending up missions that produce a commercial result (communications satellites such as Starlink for example). There are still investments being made into the pure science missions, but they are a lot more difficult to get done.
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