NASA Tests Voyager 1 Power Fix to Extend 49-Year Mission by 1 Year
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 9
NASA Tests Voyager 1 Power Fix to Extend 49-Year Mission by 1 Year
3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 9
Summary
Late-July results showed Voyager 1 passed an initial power test for NASA’s “Big Bang” fix, the first step in trying to preserve science operations for roughly another year.
The test checked whether the swap would draw more electricity than expected; a thermal test due by end-August will determine whether heaters and electronics stay above irreversible failure temperatures.
Voyager 1 needs the fix more urgently than Voyager 2: it has only 2 working science instruments left, lost another in April after a February power dip, and came close to an automatic shutdown during that maneuver.
Voyager 2 used the same procedure in July and freed nearly 10 watts a year, but NASA says the twin spacecraft have diverged after 49 years, so Voyager 1 may not respond the same way.
More than 25 billion kilometers from Earth, Voyager 1 now takes nearly a day to receive a command, and a successful fix could even allow NASA to reactivate its long-running Low-energy Charged Particles instrument.