NASA switches off further instruments on the Voyager probes
The 50th birthday is a must, but the Voyager probes should ideally continue to work into the 2030s. To achieve this, however, electricity must be saved.
Voyager 1 leaves the solar system: NASA's longest mission
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL)
NASA has switched off further systems on Voyager 1 and 2. In doing so, the US space agency wants to extend the mission of the two probes and ensure that they are still active on the 50th anniversary of their launch.
NASA announced that the cosmic ray subsystem on Voyager 1 had already been deactivated on February 25. On March 24, the measuring instrument for charged particles with low energy is to follow on Voyager 2. Three instruments will remain active on each of the two probes.
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The measure is intended to help save power. The two probes are powered by radionuclide batteries, which generate electricity from the heat produced by the decay of plutonium-238. However, such a battery loses around 4 watts of power per year.
Stars in space
“The Voyagers have been rock stars in space since their launch, and we want to keep it that way for as long as possible,” says Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “But we're running out of power. If we don't turn off one instrument on each Voyager now, they'll probably only have a few months of power left before we have to declare the mission over.”
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The Voyagers had the same equipment of ten instruments on board, but some of them were switched off relatively soon after passing the large gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. To keep both probes alive, further instruments were gradually deactivated over the years. In the coming year, NASA plans to switch off one instrument at a time.
By successively deactivating more and more instruments, NASA wants to extend the mission as far as possible. First of all, the 50th anniversary of the launch is to be reached in 2027. However, the space agency assumes that the probes will be able to last until the 2030s, but then with only one active instrument at a time.
Mission duration of four years
Voyager is the NASA mission with the longest duration: the two probes were launched about two weeks apart in the summer of 1977. The primary mission was scheduled to last four years.
The probes are now further away from Earth than any other man-made object: Voyager 1 has traveled 25 billion kilometers, Voyager 2 has traveled 21 billion kilometers. They have left the solar system and are traveling in interstellar space: Voyager 1 since 2012, Voyager 2 since 2018. With their remaining instruments, they still provide valuable data.
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However, due to their age, there are recurring problems with the two probes. Communication breaks down, systems fail. Repairs are difficult simply because of the long signal propagation times: it takes more than 23 hours for a signal to reach Voyager 1 and 19.5 hours for Voyager 2.
(wpl)
