Distant Spacecraft Power Down Instruments as They Venture into Interstellar Space
Subscribe to gudangmovies21’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Dive into the cosmos through updates on captivating findings, technological progressions, and additional insights. . NASA's two Voyager spacecraft, which were launched 47 years ago, are now deactivating certain scientific instruments as part of efforts to save energy and prolong their historic missions. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 continue to investigate unknown regions within interstellar space. On February 25, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory located in Pasadena, California, issued instructions to deactivate the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1. Additionally, Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument is scheduled to be turned off on March 24. Following these adjustments, both probes retain only three operational scientific instruments. When released just weeks apart in 1977, the Voyager spacecraft were equipped with matching suites of 10 scientific instr...