NASA has decided to shut down one of Voyager 2’s five remaining instruments. This is another sign that the space probe may be nearing the end of its historic mission. in Announcement on October 1stOfficials said engineers held back as much activity as possible to continue collecting valuable and unique data, but ultimately the spacecraft’s plasma science instruments were cut short to conserve Voyager 2’s remaining power. He explained that he had chosen to turn off the power.
The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft are designed to reach deeper into space than other man-made objects, but they require a mission-specific power source to keep their systems functioning. To do so, both spacecraft rely on three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) fueled by decaying plutonium-238. This enabled Voyager 1 and 2 to deliver approximately 470 W of power at 30 volts when they launched in 1977, but plutonium has a half-life of 87.74 years, so approximately 0.79 percent of the power was lost each year. This means that Now, more than 47 years later, the pair is running on two-thirds of the power originally estimated.
This plasma science instrument, designed to study the sun’s particle emissions, relies on four cup-shaped tools. Three cups are oriented toward the Sun to record the solar wind within the heliosphere, and the fourth cup is placed at right angles to the other cups to capture information about various planetary magnetospheres, heliospheres, and interstellar space. I will. NASA explained that while it was important for determining the moment Voyager 2 left the heliosphere in 2018, its usefulness has significantly diminished since then. At the time of the shutdown, the plasma science instruments provided particularly useful data only about once every three months during Voyager’s slow 360-degree rotation toward the Sun.
[Related: Voyager 1 defies the odds yet again and is back online.]
Because of this necessity, NASA decided it was time to shut down its plasma science instruments and scale back Voyager 2’s operations. However, this took much longer than it would take to terminate any computer program on Earth. More than 12.9 billion miles from its home planet and about 48 degrees south of the Sun’s ecliptic, NASA’s “power off” signal took 19 hours to reach Voyager 2 on September 26, and even more until a confirmation signal came back. It took 19 hours.
This isn’t the first time engineers have pulled the plug on equipment aboard the Voyager spacecraft. After completing its first mission to explore the solar system’s gas giants in the 1980s, NASA turned off instruments that were no longer useful for exploration in interstellar space. All unnecessary tools on both spacecraft are also offline, including several heaters. Voyager 1’s own plasma science instrument also stopped working in 1980, but it wasn’t until 2007 that engineers began conserving power.
Despite several recent close calls, both Voyager space probes continue to make history every day, traveling further into space than any other man-made object in existence. Barring any catastrophic problems, both Voyager 1 and 2 are likely to continue transmitting data from at least one operational instrument into the 2030s. This may be a long-term goal, but NASA engineers are doing everything they can to make it more likely.
