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It's getting a little colder in the far reaches of the solar system, beyond the sun's bubble of influence, where NASA's Voyager probes are in their fifth decade by quickly moving away from the Earth.
NASA engineers turned off a heater on the Voyager 2 because of the steady decrease in power supply facing each spacecraft during their odysseys. The heater in question is associated with an instrument called cosmic ray subsystem instrument, which always sends data to the Earth even at its new ambient temperature of minus 7 degrees Fahrenheit (less than 59 degrees Celsius). ). Engineers also started a long-time booster system on the aging spacecraft.
"The long life of the spacecraft means that we are dealing with scenarios that we would never have thought of meeting," said Suzanne Dodd, project leader for the Voyager mission at the Propulsion Laboratory. NASA California, in a statement. "We will continue to explore all the options we have to enable travelers to make the best science possible."
Related: NASA's Voyager 2 became interstellar the same day a solar probe hit the sun
The Twin Voyager satellite, launched in 1977, has spent decades scanning the outdoor solar system before making its way beyond the bubble created by the solar wind of charged particles that dribble from the sun. Voyager 1 crossed this border in 2012; Voyager 2 followed suit in November.
Although it has been decades since the duo leaned over a planet or a moon, the type of science for which the probes were designed continues to help scientists understand the solar system. As the first and only spacecraft to emerge from the solar bubble, called the heliosphere, it provides crucial data on the boundaries of our neighborhood. (That said, the probes still have a long way to go before we leave our solar system, which extends far beyond the orthot cloud of frozen bodies – in short, a journey of tens of millennia. )
When Voyager 2 bade farewell to the heliosphere last fall, it's partly the now-cold cosmic ray detector, which has announced the news to scientists. This instrument has begun to capture much higher levels of these high-energy broken atoms; The heliosphere prevents some, but not all, of this hail from continuing in our solar system.
The Voyager 2 cosmic ray instrument is in much colder climates than engineers have ever tested its performance before launching the spacecraft. The Voyager 1 ultraviolet spectrometer experienced a similar freeze in 2012 when mission engineers turned off their heater and also continued collecting data. (Mission engineers turned off this instrument in April 2016 to save energy.)
"It's amazing that Voyagers' instruments have proven so robust," said Dodd. "We are proud that they have stood the test of time."
Electrical energy is a rare commodity on both satellites, as they operate with increasingly inefficient nuclear power sources over time. At present, each of the three generators of each sensor produces only about 60% of the energy that it had when launching the Voyagers. Engineers on mission had been fighting the challenge for years and knew it would become more urgent as the spacecraft continued its journey.
Energy generation is not the only area where Voyager 2 feels its age. The spacecraft propellers, which keep the antenna from the Earth-facing probe, are losing their effectiveness, which Mission Engineers have noticed in Voyager 1 in 2017. As they are doing so, the spacecraft's propellers are losing their effectiveness. had done with his twin, the makers of Voyager 2 decided to switch to a different set of thrusters. , which the spacecraft has not used since it flew over Neptune in 1989, although a NASA statement does not indicate whether the reversal has ever occurred or is still on the to-do list.
Despite the aging issues facing the geriatric duo, nine instruments between the two satellites still work on the 20 that have taken off. And NASA personnel participating in the mission are confident that these faraway explorers will continue to gather valuable insights into our solar system and its surroundings.
"The two Voyager probes explore areas that have never been visited before, so every day is a day of discovery," said Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission, in the same release. "Traveling will continue to surprise us with new ideas about deep space."
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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