NASA has confirmed it is turning off key instruments on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, leaving just three science instruments in operation on each spacelab. The reason: to prolong the lives of the spacecraft, which left Earth’s surface in 1977.
In their infancy, each Voyager had ten instruments—ranging from cosmic ray subsystems to magnetometers—which allowed the spacecraft to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their moons in greater detail than ever before. However, as the spacelabs approached the edge of interstellar space (the heliosphere)—the first human-made spacecraft ever to do so—some of the instruments were powered down, whether because they were redundant for the next stage of the mission, to conserve energy, or due to performance degradation.
The Voyagers’ objectives are threefold. First, they aimed to characterize the environment of the outer solar system, which it completed in 1989. Second, scientists tasked the probes to search for the outer edge of the heliosphere, which it succeeded in doing when Voyager 1 reached the interstellar boundary in 2012 and Voyager 2 in 2018. The third part, which is ongoing, is to measure interstellar magnetic fields, particles, and plasma waves.
On February 25, mission scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) shut down Voyager 1’s cosmic ray subsystem (CRS)—which studies protons and other cosmic rays from the galaxy and the Sun, and helped the JPL pinpoint when and where the spacecraft exited the heliosphere—leaving only the low-energy charged particles (LECP) instrument, magnetometer (MAG), and plasma wave subsystem (PWS) up and running. But not for long—NASA explains that the “low-energy charged particle instrument will operate through the remainder of 2025 but will be shut off next year.”
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And on March 24, after Voyager 2’s LECP—which measures the various ions, electrons, and cosmic rays originating from our solar system and galaxy—is turned off, the spacecraft will only be operating its CRS, MAG, and PWS machinery. Sadly, the shutdown doesn’t end there: CRS will be powered down in 2026 in a bid to further maximize the spacecraft’s longevity.
Engineers have delayed turning off these vital instruments for as long as possible, as they have provided groundbreaking data on the make-up of deep space. However, with both Voyagers losing around 4 watts of power every year, scientists hope that making these difficult decisions could further extend the probes’ lives well into the 2030s. As Suzanne Dodd, JPL’s Voyager Mission Manager, explains, failing to do so could mean that the spacecraft “would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission.” That said, the JPL is well aware that “unforeseen challenges” could cause an abrupt halt to the mission at any moment. Indeed, Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL, concedes that “every day could be our last.”
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It’s difficult to fathom just how far the Voyager mission has surpassed all expectations. Patrick Koehn, Voyager program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said, “Every bit of additional data we have gathered since [the spacecraft completed their mission to study the outer planets] is not only valuable bonus science for heliophysics, but also a testament to the exemplary engineering that has gone into the Voyagers—starting nearly 50 years ago and continuing to this day.”
It’s not just the length of time the probes have been on duty that impresses space enthusiasts. Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles from Earth, while Voyager 2 is more than 13 billion miles away. However, despite these eye-watering distances, receiving radio signals from the spacecraft takes less than a day. What’s more, the Voyagers are moving away from the solar system at breakneck speeds of more than three astronomical units (AU) every year. To put this into perspective, one AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun—93 million miles.
Did you know? Aboard Voyagers 1 and 2 are time capsule messages intended to convey what life is like on Earth, such as the sounds we hear (including greetings in 55 languages!), the sights we see, and the diversity of life on our planet. These messages are contained within phonograph disks called “The Golden Record,” whose covers contain instructions for playing the disk’s contents and finding Earth.
Source: NASA
