NASA researchers are working on a way to further delay the time until instruments on the aging Voyager spacecraft stop working. Currently, NASA researchers have worked out a solution, after delaying the last time the battery powers up. Will provide power for Voyager 2’s five remaining science instruments for about three more years.
According to NASA, cited by theregiste, the solution was accomplished by resetting the Voyager 2 spacecraft’s on-board voltage regulator. Its onboard voltage regulator was originally designed to store the current flowing to the Voyager 2 spacecraft’s scientific instruments. Then, in the case of sudden changes that may damage these instruments, further trigger backup circuits to maintain operation.
So the researchers programmed the Voyager 2 spacecraft from Earth, 12 billion miles away, by tweaking the onboard voltage regulator to harvest a small amount of energy from the Voyager 2 spacecraft’s radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Modified to divert that power to the remaining 5 science instruments, thereby delaying the decommissioning of these science instruments by 3 years to 2026. And without this solution, Voyager 2’s science instrument operations will officially cease sometime in 2023.
Linda Spilker, a Voyager program scientist at NASA’s Propulsion Laboratory, said the farther Voyager 2 is from the sun, the more valuable the science missions it sends back. Therefore, we decided to try to make scientific instruments operate for a longer period of time. NASA also pointed out that even after more than 45 years of flight, the electrical systems on the two spacecraft, including Voyager 1 and 2, remain relatively stable and minimize the need for safety protection. In addition, the Voyager program control system can also adjust the onboard voltage in case of emergency.
NASA emphasized that Voyager 1 has not yet readjusted the voltage regulator because it had previously lost a scientific instrument to an equipment failure. With only four science instruments remaining, Voyager 1 has one more year to operate science instruments. If NASA decides the solution works on Voyager 2, it might try it later on Voyager 1 as well.
Currently, the Voyager 1 spacecraft crossed the heliosphere in 2012, becoming the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space. And Voyager 2 made the same trip in 2018, making the two spacecraft the first human-made vehicles on Earth to make interstellar travel. However, such a milestone does not mean that the two Voyager spacecraft have actually entered interstellar space, because it will still take about 300 years for these two spacecraft to reach Europe at a speed of about one million miles per day. The boundary of the Oort cloud, which would be the outermost limit of the sun’s gravitational influence.
(First image source: NASA)
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