Nearly 50 years after launch, NASA has found a clever way to stretch Voyager 2’s fading power supply and buy its science mission at least another year.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found a way to reduce Voyager 2’s power use, giving the historic spacecraft more time to continue collecting scientific data.
The operation, nicknamed the “Big Bang,” required the team to shut down certain powered devices at the same time and replace them with alternatives that require less electricity. Engineers also had to make sure Voyager 2 would remain warm enough for its systems to keep functioning.
Voyager 2 Is Losing Power Every Year
Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, rely on radioisotope thermoelectric generators for electricity. These generators produce power by converting heat released by decaying plutonium into electricity.
As the plutonium continues to decay, the amount of available power steadily declines. Each Voyager spacecraft loses about 4 watts of power every year. Nearly half a century after launch, that gradual decline has left the probes with very little spare electricity. To conserve what remains, the mission team has increasingly needed to turn off devices and systems that are not essential.
A Power Saving Move Buys More Science Time
Since 2024, the shrinking power supply has forced the mission team to switch off two science instruments on each Voyager spacecraft (each spacecraft has 10 instruments; others had been turned off previously because they were only used for the mission’s planetary encounters).
Without the “Big Bang” effort, NASA would have needed to shut down another instrument on Voyager 2 before the end of 2026. The newly conserved power is expected to allow the spacecraft’s three remaining instruments to keep operating for at least one additional year.
The mission team now intends to make the same power-saving swap on Voyager 1, which is farther from Earth than Voyager 2. Engineers plan to complete that effort in the coming months.
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