2024-10-08 17:21:06
Washington: Big news has come regarding NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft. According to NASA team, its energy is continuously decreasing. In this effort, a decision has been taken to shut down one of its science instruments. At present this spacecraft is moving forward in space at a distance of 20.9 billion kilometers from the Earth. Mission engineers sent a command to shut down Voyager 2’s Plasma Science, or PLS, experiment. It was used to observe solar winds. On September 26, a signal to shut it down was sent using the Deep Space Network (DSN). The DSN is a series of giant radio antennae that can send information billions of kilometers through space. NASA said it took 19 hours for the message to reach Voyager 2 and the return signal was received 19 hours later. This spacecraft is very old and its energy reserves are continuously decreasing. NASA expects Voyager 2 to remain operational with a science instrument into the 2030s.
Voyager’s battery is running out
The American space agency NASA has had to shut down various of its science instruments in the last few years. Because this spacecraft is 47 years old. The capacity of plutonium-powered batteries is continuously decreasing. Voyager 2 has three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which use the heat from emissions of decaying plutonium to generate electricity. This helps run the rest of the spacecraft’s computers.
Spacecraft are twin
Apart from Voyager-2, there is also Voyager-1 spacecraft. Both are twins who reached space 16 days apart. NASA says that shutting down individual instruments is not ideal. “Mission engineers have long attempted to avoid shutting down the science instruments,” the space agency said in a statement. Because no man-made spacecraft has gone beyond interstellar space. NASA said Voyager 2 has gathered limited data in recent years after exiting the heliosphere.