NASA shuts off Voyager 1 instrument to save power 15B miles from Earth
IS THIS SPACE CAPSULE HOW WE WILL LIVE AND WORK IN ORBIT IN THE FUTURE?
“Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room,” a NASA press release said. “They are using the time to finalize a more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers they call ‘the Big Bang,’ which is designed to further extend Voyager operations.”
“The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data,” the release continued.
The decision to turn off LECP was not made suddenly. NASA said mission science and engineering teams had years ago agreed on the order in which spacecraft systems would be shut down as available power declined. Of the 10 original instrument sets carried by the twin probes, seven have now been switched off. Voyager 2’s LECP instrument was shut down in March 2025.
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Because Voyager 1 is now more than 15 billion miles from Earth, commands take roughly 23 hours to arrive. The shutdown sequence itself takes more than three hours to complete. One part of the LECP system — a small motor that rotates the sensor so it can scan in all directions — will remain powered because it uses only about half a watt. Engineers hope that could leave open the possibility of restarting the instrument in the future if more power becomes available.
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Article source: https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-shuts-voyager-1-instrument-save-power-15b-miles-earth