The most distant human manufacturing objects will be able to take their science collection even further, thanks to these energy conservation measures.
The mission engineers of the NASA jet propulsion laboratory in southern California have disabled the experience of the cosmic shelves on board 1 February on February 25 and will close the particle instrument charged with Low-Energy to travel 2 on March 24. Three scientific instruments will continue to operate on each spaceship. The movements are part of a continuous effort to manage the progressive lowered power of the twin probes.
Launched in 1977, travels 1 and 2 are based on a Radio-Isotope power system This generates electricity from the heat of the decomposing plutonium. Both lose approximately 4 watts of power each year.
“Travels have been stars of the Deep space rock since their launch, and we want to keep it as long as possible,” said Suzanne Dodd, project manager travel at JPL. “But The power supply is low. If we do not deactivate an instrument on each travel now, they would probably only have a few months of power before having to declare the end of the mission. »»
The two spacecrafts wear identical sets of 10 scientific instruments. Some of the instruments, oriented towards data collection during planetary flies, were disabled after the two spaceships finished their Exploration of gas giants in the solar system.
The instruments that remained fed far beyond the last planetary overview were those that the scientific team considered important to study the heliosphere of the solar system, a protective bubble of solar wind and magnetic fields created by the sun and the interstellar space, the region outside the heliosphere. Traveling 1 reached the edge of the heliosphere and the Start of interstellar space in 2012; Travel 2 reached the border in 2018. No other human manufacturing spacecraft worked in the interstellar space.
Last October, to keep the energy, the project Apparent the instrument of science of plasma to travel 2which measures the amount of plasma – the electrically loaded atoms – and the direction it flows. The instrument had only collected limited data in recent years due to its orientation compared to the direction that plasma flows into the interstellar space. The Instrument of Science of Plasma of Voyager 1 had been disabled years ago due to degraded performance.
THE Cosmic Ray subsystem This was closed on Voyager 1 last week is a series of three telescopes designed to study the cosmic rays, including the protons of the galaxy and the sun, by measuring their energy and their flow. The data of these telescopes helped the science team to travel to determine when and where to travel 1 left the heliosphere.
Scheduled for deactivation later this month, travel 2 Low energy loaded particle instrument Measures the different ions, electrons and cosmic rays from our solar system and our galaxy. The instrument consists of two subsystems: the low-energy particle telescope for wider energy measures and the low-energy magnetospheric particle analyzer for more targeted magnetosphere studies.
The two systems use a rotary platform so that the field of vision is 360 degrees, and the platform is powered by a step-by-step engine which provides an impulse of 15.7 Watts every 192 seconds. The engine was tested at 500,000 stages – enough to guarantee continuous operation through the mission meetings with Saturn, which occurred in August 1980 to travel 2. When it was deactivated on Voyager 2, the engine has made more than 8.5 million stages.
“Traveling spaceships have far exceeded their initial mission to study the external planets,” said Patrick Koehn, scientist of the NASA travel program in Washington. “All the additional data that we have collected since then, it is not only a precious bonus science for heliophysics, but also a testimony of exemplary engineering that has entered travels – starting almost 50 years ago and continuing to date.”
Mission engineers have taken measures to avoid deactivating scientific instruments as long as possible because the scientific data collected by Twin Voyager probes are unique. With these two deactivated instruments, travels should have enough electricity to operate for about a year before the team became another instrument on the two spacecraft.
Meanwhile, traveling 1 will continue to use its magnetometer and its plasma wave subsystem. The low -energy particle instrument of the spaceship will work in the rest of 2025, but will be closed next year.
Traveling 2 will continue to exploit its magnetic field and its plasma wave instruments in the predictable future. His Cosmic Ray subsystem should be arrested in 2026.
With the implementation of this electricity conservation plan, engineers think that the two probes could have enough electricity to continue to operate with at least one scientific instrument in the 2030s. But they are also aware that travels have been in the deep space for 47 years and that unforeseen challenges could shorten this chronology.
Travel 1 and travel 2 remain the most distant objects of the man never built. Travel 1 is Over 15 billion kilometers (25 billion kilometers). Traveling 2 is more than 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers) of the earth.
In fact, due to this distance, it takes more than 23 hours to obtain a radio signal from the Earth to travel 1 and 19½ hours to travel 2.
“Each minute of every day, travels explore a region where no spacecraft has been previously went,” said Linda Spilker, scientist of the Voyager project at JPL. “It also means that every day could be our last. But this day could also bring another interstellar revelation. Thus, we withdraw all stops, do what we can to make sure that travelers 1 and 2 continue their pioneer during the maximum possible time. »»
For more information on NASA travel missions, visit:
https://Science.nasa.gov/mission/voyer
DC AGLE / CALLA COFIELD
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-653-6297 / 626-808-2469
agle@jpl.nasa.gov / / calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
2025-032