NASA keeps 48-year-old Voyager 2 alive for another year
NASA to keep its 48-year-old Voyager 2 probe running for yet another year
NASA has found a way to extend the mission of Voyager 2, which is running low on power after nearly five decades in space. By shutting off non-essential systems and using lower-power alternatives, engineers have ensured that all three of the probe's remaining instruments can operate for at least another year. The same power-saving changes will be applied to Voyager 1 in the coming months.
The spacecraft power margins have grown razor thin, requiring the team to conserve energy by shutting off non-essential devices and systems.
- jvanderbot
I ran a few research tasks at JPL, small dollar studies.
We'd often recruit part time work from engineers around the lab through informal networks, (instead of the official channels that segment by "specialization").
One year, one of the developers on my task was the apparently last person who could encode the command sequences for Voyager 2 (hoping memory serves me correctly - event though it was only 8 years ago). She would occasionally come late to meetings because they were dealing with some trouble with the old satellite.
Pretty amazing how little is set aside for these projects that most the staff keeping it alive have "day jobs". I hope she's still uploading
- gjkood
Just the other day I heard about the heroic effort[0] to restore communication with Voyager 2 after they inadvertently changed the antenna to point in the wrong direction due to some planned manoeuvres.
Definitely worth a listen if you get the time.
For me personally, I feel this project is the greatest engineering effort in human history bringing together the work of Newton, Kepler, the mathematics of the celestial navigation, gravitational assist techniques[1], etc. necessary to keep a little probe on its route accurately over 50 years in space.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/08/02/1191341035/nasa-voyager-2-spa...
- bcraven
Ah, good, an opportunity to recommend It's Quieter in the Twilight (2022). Beautiful documentary.
- wanderingmind
A slight tangent here is a technical deep dive on Voyager 1 fixing a memory corruption error in 2023 by hand 15 billion miles away. Blows my mind of the reverse engineering done to achieve this
- nullhole
Not a very good title, given that the subtitle for the very same article gives the important context that "Voyager 2 would have had to shut down one of its last remaining instruments later this year, until NASA made some power changes."
(as an aside, a celebratory coffee mug for when Voyager 1 finally gets to the 1-light-day-from-earth mark would be very popular, in case anyone from the JPL store is reading this. 'Yesterday's sunrise, today!')