() – The NASA team overseeing the iconic Voyager 2 spacecraft decided to shut down one of its scientific instruments to conserve energy. The probe is currently about 20.9 billion kilometers from Earth.
Mission engineers sent a command to shut down Voyager 2’s Plasma Science, or PLS, experiment — used to observe solar winds — on Sept. 26, using the Deep Space Network, a series of huge satellite antennas. radio that can transmit information billions of kilometers through space.
It took 19 hours for the message to reach Voyager 2, and a return signal was received 19 hours later, NASA said Tuesday.
Even though the aging probe’s energy reserves are running low, NASA expects Voyager 2 to continue operating with at least one scientific instrument into the 2030s.
The US space agency has routinely had to carry out commands to shut down various scientific instruments over the years as the 47-year-old spacecraft depletes its plutonium supply. Voyager 2 has three radioisotope thermoelectric generators that power the spacecraft by converting heat given off by decaying plutonium into electricity.
But shutting down equipment on Voyager 2 or Voyager 1 — an identical spacecraft launched 16 days after its twin — is not ideal, NASA said.
“Mission engineers took steps to avoid shutting down a scientific instrument for as long as possible because the scientific data collected by the twin Voyager probes is unique,” the space agency said in a statement. “No other man-made spacecraft has operated in interstellar space, the region outside the heliosphere.”
The plasma experiment consisted of a set of four “cups,” or plasma detectors, that can collect information about the flow of ions and electrons ejected by the Sun through the solar system, known as solar winds. The solar wind flows from the corona, or hot outer atmosphere of the Sun, interacting with the planets and the interstellar medium.
These readings helped NASA determine that Voyager 2 left the heliosphere — or the area around our Sun filled with solar wind and containing the Sun’s magnetic field — in 2018, according to the space agency.
After reaching beyond the heliosphere, or interstellar space, Voyager 2 has “collected limited data in recent years due to its orientation relative to the direction plasma flows,” NASA explained.
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