Engineers turn off one more instrument on each Voyager spacecraft
The routes the Voyager spacecraft have
taken since launch. Not to scale.
Due to continuing reductions in the power generated by their nuclear energy sources (after a half century of operation) engineers have now turned off one more science instrument on each Voyager spacecraft in order to extend the spacecrafts’ life as long as possible.
Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1 on Feb. 25 and will shut off Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument on March 24. Three science instruments will continue to operate on each spacecraft. The moves are part of an ongoing effort to manage the gradually diminishing power supply of the twin probes.
Even with this action, the future lifespan of both spacecraft is very limited. It is expected the savings in power will allow both to last about a year longer, well into 2026. In order to keep the Voyagers operating as long as into the 2030s mission engineers are now working up a timeline for shutting down the remaining instruments in a step-by-step manner. In that long run the goal won’t be science gathering but engineering. Can humans keep a spacecraft operating for more than a half century at distances billions of miles away?
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The routes the Voyager spacecraft have
taken since launch. Not to scale.
Due to continuing reductions in the power generated by their nuclear energy sources (after a half century of operation) engineers have now turned off one more science instrument on each Voyager spacecraft in order to extend the spacecrafts’ life as long as possible.
Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1 on Feb. 25 and will shut off Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument on March 24. Three science instruments will continue to operate on each spacecraft. The moves are part of an ongoing effort to manage the gradually diminishing power supply of the twin probes.
Even with this action, the future lifespan of both spacecraft is very limited. It is expected the savings in power will allow both to last about a year longer, well into 2026. In order to keep the Voyagers operating as long as into the 2030s mission engineers are now working up a timeline for shutting down the remaining instruments in a step-by-step manner. In that long run the goal won’t be science gathering but engineering. Can humans keep a spacecraft operating for more than a half century at distances billions of miles away?
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It’s hard to believe these are still going. That is seriously cool.
Not sure if great extensions can be made in the duration of power generation, but if the nuclear powered rockets envisioned by NASA can be realized, their long duration of acceleration will mean that our probes can reach multiple orders of magnitude further out into deep space, while still actively recording and sending data!
48 years and counting!
I sometimes wonder if the budget spent on Voyager 1 and 2 isn’t the best money, dollar for dollar, ever spent by the U.S. federal government — save possibly for the Louisiana Purchase.
A close second.
What is the last thing that gets turned off before the radio fails?
Tangentially related–
I was rereading my June 1970 copy of Sky & Telescope (page 350) wherein it is reported that “the Apollo 13 lunar module’s Snap-27 nuclear generator, containing 8.36 lbs. of plutonium in a graphite cannister, was jettisoned shortly before re-entry” and is at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean (2,700 fathoms) northeast of New Zealand.