Overview
- Voyager 1’s Low-Energy Charged Particles instrument was switched off Friday, a step JPL took to conserve power and avoid an automated shutdown.
- The action follows a February 27 roll maneuver that caused an unexpected power dip and threatened to trigger the spacecraft’s undervoltage protection.
- Two instruments remain active — a plasma-wave detector and a magnetometer — and engineers expect the change to provide roughly a year of breathing room.
- NASA plans to test a bundled “Big Bang” power reconfiguration on Voyager 2 in May–June, then attempt it on Voyager 1 no sooner than July if the test works.
- More than 15 billion miles from Earth with a 23-hour one-way signal delay, the probe’s nuclear generator loses about 4 watts each year, so teams follow a preplanned shutdown order and even left LECP’s 0.5-watt motor on to ease a possible restart.