NASA Disables Voyager 1's LECP Instrument to Conserve Power for Extended Mission
On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the
Read the full articleYou might also wanna read
Voyager 1's power supply is dwindling after nearly 50 years, forcing NASA to shut down its instruments one by one
Nearly 15 billion miles away, Voyager 1 still whispers back on 20 watts — but its plutonium heart fades a little every year, forcing NASA to
19fortyfive.com·13d ago
NASA is keeping Voyager 1 alive by switching off instruments and heaters one by one—but it cannot let the spacecraft become so cold that its fuel lines freeze. If those lines fail, Voyager could lose the thrusters that keep its antenna aimed at Earth, per
With its power fading about four watts a year, Voyager 1 is being kept alive one switched-off instrument at a time, against a hard limit: le
NASA once reactivated Voyager 1 thrusters that had been unused for 37 years, sending commands across interstellar space to machinery built before many of the engineers operating it were born
On 28 November 2017, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent Voyager 1 a command to fire four thrusters that had been silent sinc
The engineers trying to save a fading Voyager had one chance to fire thrusters frozen and unused for 37 years, and when the signal finally returned they learned the impossible had worked
The story sounds almost too neat: a spacecraft launched in 1977, a set of thrusters last used in 1980, and a team on Earth asking them to wo
BepiColombo switches off ion thrusters as it arrives at Mercury after eight-year journey
At 15:24 CEST on 15 June 2026, a faint blue glow in space was switched off for the last time. After powering BepiColombo's eight-year journe
NOAA's SOLAR-1 satellite begins operational space weather monitoring from Lagrange Point 1
NOAA’s Space weather Observations at L1 to Advance Readiness – 1 (SOLAR-1) observatory has officially entered operational service, marking a
noaa.gov·1mo ago
Comments
Sign in to join the conversation.
No comments yet. Be the first.