NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

I had the honor and pleasure to take a class from the venerable professor, JPL director, and Voyager project scientist Ed Stone at Caltech in 2018. He excitedly told us a "secret" on November 1st that Voyager 2 had reached interstellar space, and he showed us the actual data proving it. But we had to keep it a secret until the press release that Monday, November 5. It was a special moment to see his passion for the project almost 50 years in, and felt incredibly special to hear it directly from him. RIP professor.

I hope the voyagers can last longer. We are trapped on Earth, but it is just fascinating (and relieving) thinking of them expanding the boundary of human's space adventure.

It continues to irritate me that There aren't any other functioning deep space probes besides New Horizons (launched in 2006, and which flies at a slower speed than Voyagers). One new operating deep space probe in nearly 50 years is just embarrassing. I mean yay space telescopes and everything, but we seem to have given up anything that isn't a state-of-the-art prestige project. I was hopeful about projects like Breakthrough starshot but that seems to have stalled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

Curious, has Voyager 1 brought in any data in recent years that is scientifically meaningful? Not to put down the efforts of keeping it alive, I love that. Just wonder how much of its task is "done".

I think there’s going to be more than a few people feeling a little emotional when the days that the Voyagers go dark come. What magnificent machines.

If anybody wants further context, here's an excellent paper on the status of the Voyager mission as of 2016, written by one of the engineers at JPL. It has an overview of what all the instruments on Voyager do and everything the team had done to keep the mission going as of that point. https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/VIMChallenges.pdf I also highly recommend the documentary "It's Quieter in the Twilight" which is about the entire Voyager team and their efforts to keep the program operational.

> During a routine, planned roll maneuver on Feb. 27

It's amazing not only are the electrical components still operational, but some mechanical ones as well.

Amazing that this spacecraft has been operating for nearly half a century.

> Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room. 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 team will implement the Big Bang on Voyager 2 first, which has a little more power to spare and is closer to Earth, making it the safer test subject. Tests are planned for May and June 2026. If they go well, the team will attempt the same fix on Voyager 1 no sooner than July. If it works, there is even a chance that Voyager 1’s LECP could be switched back on.

Voyager 1 has only a year left otherwise? Also, what low-powered alternatives are there? Is there that much redundancy? I'd love to know what their idea and plan are?

Also,

> For Voyager 1, the LECP was next on that list. The team shut off the LECP on Voyager 2 in March 2025.

Why? Voyager 2 has more power to spare, per the prior quote.

> the sequence of commands to shut down the instrument will take 23 or so hours to reach the spacecraft

Closing in on one light day!

Imagine deploying your bug fix and having to wait two days to find out if it worked!

Can we send faster better equipped craft to move past solar system in a year or two ?