NASA orders ‘power diet’ for Voyager 2, extending monitoring period by one year — BigGo Finance

NASA has remotely delivered an “energy-efficient recipe” to Voyager 2 — the unmanned spacecraft now in its 49th year of flight — and successfully extended its operational life without turning off any additional science instruments. According to the US scientific community last week, NASA’s “Big Bang” project has boosted the energy efficiency of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, securing enough electricity to keep its three remaining science instruments running for at least another year.

NASA sent power-saving commands via radio waves to Voyager 2 last month. The spacecraft is currently located 21.4 billion kilometers (about 13.3 billion miles) from Earth, which means the signal took only 19 hours to reach it. This action was prompted by the deterioration of Voyager 2’s radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), whose output had fallen to approximately half its level at the time of launch. RTG production is decreasing by about 4 watts per year, NASA said.

Since the 1990s, NASA has responded to power shortages by permanently shutting down Voyager 2’s scientific instruments one by one. Of the ten instruments on board at launch, only three remain operational today: a magnetometer, a cosmic ray detector, and a plasma wave instrument. The spacecraft was facing the possibility of turning off another instrument by the end of this year, but new energy-saving measures made this possible to avoid.

▲ Official NASA diagram showing the locations of instruments aboard Voyager 2. The imaging cameras, photopolarimeter, and ultraviolet spectrometer have already been turned off; Only the magnetometer, cosmic ray detector and plasma wave instrument remain active. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)