NASA announcement<\/a> which revealed that during a planned roll maneuver on February 27, \u201cVoyager 1\u2019s power levels fell unexpectedly.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cMission engineers knew any additional drop in power could trigger the spacecraft\u2019s undervoltage fault protection system, which would shut down components on its own to safeguard the probe, requiring recovery by the flight team \u2013 a lengthy process that carries its own risks,\u201d the announcement explains.<\/p>\n
To avoid that scenario, the Voyager team decided to shut off the craft\u2019s Low-energy Charged Particles experiment (LECP), because they hope doing so will give Voyager 1 \u201cabout a year of breathing room.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile shutting down a science instrument is not anybody\u2019s preference, it is the best option available,\u201d states a canned quote from Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at JPL.<\/p>\n
NASA left LECP in a state that means it can\u2019t do its job but didn\u2019t turn off a small motor that consumes just 0.5 watts because the aerospace agency says doing so \u201cgives the team the best chance of being able to turn the instrument back on someday if they find extra power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Readers will doubtless remember that Voyager 1 is over 25 billion kilometres from Earth and therefore unserviceable, while its radioisotope thermoelectric generator will one day cease emitting sufficient energy to keep the craft alive. Voyager 2 has the same problems.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s announcement reveals that engineers think they can find power for LECP by developing \u201ca more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers they call \u201cthe Big Bang,\u201d which is designed to further extend Voyager operations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once \u2013 hence the nickname \u2013 turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data,\u201d the announcement states.<\/p>\n
Work on Big Bang is sufficiently advanced that NASA plans to test it on Voyager 2 in May and June. If that effort succeeds, NASA will try it on Voyager 1 no sooner than July.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it works, there is even a chance that Voyager 1\u2019s LECP could be switched back on,\u201d NASA says.<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s possible, it would be yet another remarkable achievement in the 48-year history of the Voyager missions, which NASA expected would last the four years they took to reach Jupiter and Saturn. Both craft carried ten instruments, but now operate just three apiece. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA has revealed it\u2019s working on a plan called \u201cThe Big Bang\u201d that it hopes will extend the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-407903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}