After 47 years, NASA is disabling the probe’s instrument

Last week, NASA deactivated the seventh instrument on the Voyager 2 probe, which has been exploring space since 1977.

This is the plasma science instrument, which was important to collect electrically charged particles from the Sun and show that the probe had crossed the boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space.

According to the US Space Agency, the closure was necessary to save energy and ensure that the probe’s other scientific instruments continued to work.

NASA knows that Voyager 2 has enough energy to keep at least one instrument active for the next decade. However, it was necessary to turn off the above tool.

How does the recently turned off tool work?

• The nearly fifty-year-old probe has four “cups,” three of which point toward the sun to analyze winds coming from the heliosphere. The fourth glass observed the plasma of the magnetosphere, the planets, the heliosphere, and finally interstellar space.
• But when Voyager 2 left the heliosphere, the flow of plasma passing through the first three cups slowed;
• The NASA team noted in a statement that “the most useful data in the room comes every three months, when the spacecraft makes a 360-degree rotation around its axis toward the sun.” statement;
• This was critical for the space agency to decide to deactivate the instrument before others.

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Mission engineers are always monitoring changes to the operations of the spacecraft, which has been in operation for 47 years, to ensure they do not generate unwanted side effects. The team confirmed that the shutdown order was implemented without any incidents and that the probe was operating normally.

NASA, in a statement

The next step is to monitor Voyager 2’s resources in order to decide which instrument to turn off next when necessary, to keep the probe alive much longer and send us more vital data.

Where is Voyager 2 currently?

Between August 1977 and 2018, Voyager 2 remained in our solar system. Today, it is more than 20 billion kilometers away from Earth. Its four remaining scientific instruments study what lies beyond the heliosphere (the bubble of solar particles that surrounds our solar system).