Skip to main content

NASA turns off another of Voyager 2’s instruments to save power

Engineers work on NASA’s Voyager 2 at JPL in March 1977, ahead of the spacecraft’s launch that August. The probe carries 10 science instruments, some of which have been turned off over the years to save power.
Engineers work on NASA’s Voyager 2 at JPL in March 1977, ahead of the spacecraft’s launch that August. The probe carries 10 science instruments, some of which have been turned off over the years to save power. NASA

The venerable Voyager spacecrafts are now nearly 50 years old, and having headed out beyond the orbit of Pluto and into interstellar space, the pair are the most distant man-made objects in the universe. But despite their incredible longevity and success, they are inevitably running low on power, so their operations have to be tweaked from the ground to enable them to run for as long as possible. Recently, NASA announced that it is turning off another of Voyager 2’s science instruments to help maintain power for longer.

The command was sent to turn off Voyager 2’s plasma science instrument on September 26, but the spacecraft is now so far away that it took 19 hours for the signal to leave Earth and arrive at Voyager, and a further 19 hours for the confirmation signal to arrive back at Earth. The operation went smoothly, according to NASA.

Recommended Videos

“Mission engineers always carefully monitor changes being made to the 47-year-old spacecraft’s operations to ensure they don’t generate any unwanted secondary effects,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in an update. “The team has confirmed that the switch-off command was executed without incident and the probe is operating normally.”

Several of Voyager 2’s instruments have already been turned off, including those turned off after the Voyager pair completed their original mission to explore the outer planets of the solar system in the 1980s. As the spacecraft headed into interstellar space, these instruments were no longer necessary, but the plasma instrument remained on and was important for the study of the boundary between the heliosphere, which is the outer edge of space influenced by the sun, and interstellar space, which is the space between stars. One important discovery made using this instrument is that there is a distinct boundary beyond which stellar winds from the sun do not flow.

And while the space between stars is largely empty, it is not completely devoid of material or interest. In 2021, the other Voyager 1 probe was able to detect the background “hum” of interstellar gas, with small amounts of hydrogen and helium forming a kind of gentle background rain.

Although Voyager 2 will now no longer be able to use its plasma science instrument, it does still have four other science instruments operational, including those for studying magnetic fields and cosmic rays. And it isn’t goodbye for the mission yet, as NASA estimates that the spacecraft has enough power to continue exploring interstellar space with at least one instrument into the 2030s.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
NASA’s Crew-7 astronauts splash down safely off the coast of Florida
Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, left, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft onboard the SpaceX recovery ship MEGAN shortly after having landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa, and Borisov are returning after nearly six-months in space as part of Expedition 70 aboard the International Space Station.

NASA's Crew-7 mission has splashed down without incident off the coast of Florida, with the four astronauts on board returning safely from the International Space Station (ISS). The crew spent a total of 199 days orbiting the Earth and are now headed to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to rest and recover.

The crew traveled in a SpaceX Dragon capsule that undocked from the ISS on Monday, March 11, and splashed down at 5:47 a.m. ET on Tuesday, March 12. The group arrived at the station in late August 2023, and spent their time in orbit performing research and maintenance tasks.

Read more
NASA astronauts need good weather for Crew-8 launch. Here’s how it’s looking
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a static fire test.

UPDATE: SpaceX and NASA are now targeting 11:16 p.m. ET on Saturday, March 2 for the launch of Crew-8.

SpaceX is preparing to launch three NASA astronauts and one Roscosmos cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS).

Read more
NASA shows off its experimental, quiet supersonic aircraft, the X-59
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits on the apron outside Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility at dawn in Palmdale, California. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to address one of the primary challenges to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.

NASA has shown off its new quiet supersonic aircraft, the X-59. Created along with Lockheed Martin, the aircraft is designed to reduce the sonic boom created by traveling faster than the speed of sound to what the agency calls a "sonic thump." Supersonic flights over land are currently forbidden due to the noise disturbance they cause, and the X-59 is an experimental aircraft aimed at reducing this noise to something more tolerable to those on the ground.

At an event today, Friday January 12, NASA debuted the aircraft ahead of testing. Its first flight is scheduled for later this year. In a statement, NASA said that it aims to use this one-of-a-kind airplane to gather data and pave the way for future commercial supersonic aircraft.

Read more