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KOMPUTER JADUL-, The Voyager spacecraft have been roaming interstellar space for more than 47 years, collecting valuable data about the vast cosmos. All that travel has had a profound effect on the most distant human-made objects, and the spacecraft’s days are numbered. NASA engineers are now being forced to turn off scientific instruments on both Voyager probes in order to keep the iconic missions alive.
Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory turned off Voyager 1’s cosmic ray subsystem experiment on Feb. 25, and will turn off Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument on March 24, NASA announced Wednesday. If not for these energy-saving measures, the twin probes might still have a few months left before running out of power. The spacecraft now have enough power to operate for another year before engineers are forced to turn off two more instruments. It’s a grim reality for the popular interstellar travelers, which have experienced a number of technical issues in recent years.
“The Voyagers have been the rock stars of space since they launched, and we want to keep them that way for as long as possible,” Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, said in a statement. “But power is running out. If we don’t turn off one instrument on each Voyager now, they may only have a few more months of power before we have to declare the end of the mission.”
The Voyagers are powered by the heat of decaying plutonium, which is converted into electricity. Each year, the aging spacecraft loses about 4 watts of power. To conserve power, the entire mission team has been turning off all systems deemed unnecessary to keep the mission going, including some of the science instruments. Each Voyager spacecraft started with 10 science instruments when they launched in 1977, but now have only three each.
Some of the instruments are needed to collect data during flybys of planets. However, those instruments were turned off soon after the spacecraft completed their exploration of the inner solar system. Voyager 1 reached the beginning of interstellar space in 2012, while Voyager 2 reached its limit in 2018, traveling beyond the protective bubble surrounding the solar system known as the heliosphere.
The Voyager spacecraft were then left with only instruments designed to study the solar system’s heliosphere and interstellar space. In October 2024, the team decided to turn off Voyager 2’s plasma science instrument, which measures the number of electrically charged atoms, in an effort to conserve power.
Voyager 1’s cosmic ray subsystem, which was turned off last week, is a suite of three telescopes designed to study cosmic rays by measuring their energy and flux. Data collected by the telescopes helped the Voyager team determine when and where Voyager 1 exited the heliosphere, NASA said. Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument, which is scheduled to be turned off this month, measures a variety of ions, electrons and cosmic rays emanating from our solar system and galaxy.
Voyager 1 still has a magnetometer and plasma wave subsystem, and its low-energy charged particle instrument will be turned off next year. Voyager 2 will continue to collect data through its magnetic field and plasma wave instruments, while its cosmic ray subsystem is scheduled to be turned off in 2026.
“The Voyager spacecraft has far outlived its original mission to study the outer planets,” Patrick Koehn, Voyager program scientist, said in a statement. “Every additional piece of data we’ve collected since then is not only valuable bonus science for heliophysics, but also evidence of the incredible engineering that has gone into Voyager—starting nearly 50 years ago and continuing today.”
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, less than a month after its sister probe, Voyager 2, began its journey into space. The spacecraft took a faster route, exiting the asteroid belt earlier than its sibling, and made close encounters with Jupiter and Saturn, where it discovered two Jovian moons, Thebe and Metis, and five new moons, and a new ring, called the G-ring, around Saturn. Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977, on a course toward the solar system's gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, and explored the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) from Earth, while Voyager 2 is more than 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers).
With plans to conserve all energy at this time, NASA engineers believe that the twin spacecraft will be able to continue operating into the 2030s with one instrument each. “Every minute of every day, Voyager is exploring regions where no spacecraft has ever gone before", Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL, said in a statement. “That also means every day could be our last".
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