NASA has shut down the plasma science instrument on Voyager 2 to conserve power and keep the spacecraft running for as long as possible.
The Voyager 2 plasma science instrument is meant to study the flow of charged atoms in space. NASA decided to shut it off in late September, wanting Voyager 2 to continue deep space exploration for as long as possible. The Voyager 2 is expected to continue probing the deep reaches of space until 2030.
NASA did the same shut-off for the Voyager 1 a long time ago as it was exploring space through the 1980s. Eventually, the Voyager 1 spacecraft’s instrument was shut down in 2007 and is still in service.
Voyager 2’s trek
NASA launched the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1977. The craft sent information on the solar system back to Earth until it left in 2018. Since then, the spacecraft has been exploring deep space, sending information back to NASA alongside its twin, the Voyager 1. The Voyager 2 is last reported to be about 12.8 billion miles from Earth.
Voyager 2 is beyond the sun’s heliosphere and uses three science instruments to collect and send data back to Earth. The spacecraft will continue to move along through interstellar space, exploring otherwise uncharted territory for humanity.
The spacecraft’s instruments
The Voyager 2 started with ten instruments operating on board but has since shut off all but three. The Voyager 1 and 2 are the only spacecrafts humanity has exploring space’s deep reaches. Because of that, NASA wants to keep them up and running as long as possible.
The information these spacecraft collect is unique and extremely valuable as humanity seeks to learn more about space and the universe. While NASA has tried to delay the shutdown of instruments on each spacecraft, eventually, the need to do so has become inevitable. The plasma instrument was the odd man out this time and got shut off for the greater purpose of exploration.
Officials at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement:
“Mission engineers always carefully monitor changes being made to the 47-year-old spacecraft’s operations to ensure they don’t generate any unwanted secondary effects. The team has confirmed that the switch-off command was executed without incident, and the probe is operating normally.”
The plasma instrument used four cup-like devices to collect plasma in space. Three cups are angled towards the sun and monitor the charged atoms from solar wind emitted by the sun. The fourth cup is angled in the opposite direction to catch charged particles from magnetic fields the spacecraft passed along the way. The plasma instrument was more crucial before it left the heliosphere since the Voyager 2 detected drops in plasma in the solar wind.
