This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: NASA's Voyager team is celebrating two recent developments with the Voyager 1 spacecraft: In September, they successfully completed a months-long effort to stretch the spacecraft's diminishing power supply. Then, on Oct. 20, an unexpected loss of communication with the spacecraft resolved itself after 48 hours, before the team sent commands to the spacecraft to troubleshoot the issue.
In early September, engineers successfully turned off three devices on the Voyager 1 spacecraft and substituted them with three lower-power alternatives. Nicknamed the "Big Bang," the energy-saving effort was completed about six weeks after the mission team performed the same swap on Voyager 2. The Big Bang will enable Voyager 1's remaining science instruments to operate longer than previously anticipated.
The Voyagers get their power from radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which convert heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. With the plutonium supply continually depleting, both probes lose about 4 watts of power each year. Almost a half-century after Voyager launched, the spacecraft power margins have grown thin, requiring the team to conserve energy by shutting off nonessential devices and systems.
The Big Bang was unique because it required the swaps to occur simultaneously. The six devices help keep the spacecraft warm enough to operate in the frigid expanse of space, and only by swapping all three could the team both reduce the amount of power Voyager 1 uses and ensure that heat is properly distributed on the spacecraft. In recent years, the dwindling power supply has forced the team to turn off two science instruments.
The mission launched in 1977 with 10 dedicated science instruments, some of which were turned off after the spacecraft's planetary encounters. Some instruments were left on to study the outer region of the heliosphere, a bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the sun. Now, the Voyagers are traveling through interstellar space, the area outside the heliosphere, and are the only spacecraft to ever study this region directly.
Without performing the Big Bang, the mission would have needed to turn off another instrument on Voyager 1 as early as summer 2027. But between now and summer 2027, the team is at the ready for more surprises like the one they recently encountered when they briefly lost contact with Voyager 1 on Oct. 18 and 19. NASA's Deep Space Network—large antennas at three facilities around the globe used to communicate with spacecraft at the moon and beyond—was unable to detect a radio signal from the probe, which is 16 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, during two scheduled communications attempts, 24 hours apart.
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