Nasa announced on Wednesday that it will turn off another science instrument on Voyager 2 spacecraft later this month to conserve power. This follows last week’s shutdown of a similar instrument on Voyager 1.
The instrument on Voyager 2 measures charged particles and cosmic rays, while the instrument on Voyager 1 was designed to study cosmic rays.
The move is part of an effort to extend the life of the 47-year-old spacecraft, which is currently operating in interstellar space—the vast region beyond our solar system.
Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, confirmed the decision in a statement, emphasising that energy-saving measures are necessary to continue receiving data for as long as possible.
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 on a mission to explore the outer planets. Over the decades, they have provided groundbreaking discoveries, including Jupiter’s faint ring system, Saturn’s moons, and Voyager 2’s historic flybys of Uranus and Neptune—the only spacecraft ever to visit those planets.
Even with some instruments shut down, each Voyager still has three active systems gathering data on the sun’s protective bubble and the unknowns of deep space. Voyager 1 is now over 15 billion miles (24.14 billion km) from Earth, while Voyager 2 is more than 13 billion miles (20.92 billion km) away.
Last September, Nasa powered down Voyager 2’s plasma science instrument, which measures the flow of charged particles in space.