A spacecraft 20.5 billion Km from Earth enters power saving mode

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —

Space exploration Voyager 2 went into power saving mode and turned off one of his science instruments. This was done because Voyager 2’s power supply was running low.

Space exploration It is currently flowing through space at a distance of approximately 20.9 billion kilometers from Earth.

The NASA team working on Voyager 2 ordered the launch of Voyager 2’s Plasma Science, or PLS, on September 26 using the Deep Space Network, an array of massive radio antennas that can transmit billions of information. of miles out in space. PLS is used to observe the solar wind.

In his statement on Tuesday (1/10), NASA he said that it took 19 hours for the message to reach Voyager 2, and that a return signal was received 19 hours later.

This aging spacecraft is starting to run out of power reserves, but NASA believes that Voyager 2 will continue to operate with at least one science instrument into the 2030s.

The United States space agency has regularly had to make orders to shut down various science instruments over the years as the 47-year-old spacecraft’s plutonium supply dwindles.

Voyager 2 is known to have three radioisotope thermoelectric generators that power the spacecraft by converting the heat released by the decay of plutonium into electricity.

But, NASA said, turning off equipment on Voyager 2 or Voyager 1 is not a good idea.

“Mission engineers have taken steps to shut down science instruments as much as possible because the science data collected by the twin Voyager probes is unprecedented,” the space agency said in a statement, cited from CNN.

“No other human spacecraft had ever operated in interstellar space, the region outside the heliosphere,” he said.

The plasma test instrument itself consists of a set of four plasma detectors, which can collect information about the flow of ions and electrons spewed from the sun across the solar system, or what is commonly known as the solar wind. sun The solar wind flows from the corona, or hot outer atmosphere of the Sun, interacting with the planets and the interstellar medium.

These solar wind readings helped NASA determine that Voyager 2 had left the heliosphere in 2018.

In addition, after reaching beyond the heliosphere, Voyager 2 has collected limited data in recent years due to its direction relative to the direction of the plasma flow.

Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977 from Cape Canaveral, Florida using a Titan-Centaur rocket. On September 5, Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral using a Titan-Centaur rocket.

Voyager 1 and 2 studied the major planets in the solar system, namely Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune for 48 months, and looked at the ring systems and magnetic fields of these planets.

Named from JPL Voyager, the closest approach to Jupiter occurred on March 5, 1979 for Voyager 1; July 9, 1979 for Voyager 2. Voyager was the third and fourth human space probes to fly by all the planets in our solar system.

(net/dmi)

[Gambas:Video CNN]