To save power, NASA turns instruments on Voyager 2

To save power, NASA has turned off other scientific instruments on the long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.

The space agency said on Tuesday that the Voyager 2 plasma science instrument, designed to measure the flow of charged atoms, was turned off at the end of September so the spacecraft could continue to study for as long as possible. possible, which they estimate will be there until the 2030s.

NASA retired a series of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, after they both studied gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space, or interstellar space. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working long ago and was finally turned off in 2007.

The other four instruments on Voyager 2 will continue to collect information about magnetic fields and particles. The goal is to explore the bits of space outside the sun’s protective bubble.

Voyager 2, launched in 1977, is the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune. It is currently more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) from Earth. [em/ab]