NASA turned off equipment on the longest-flying spacecraft in history

The device that was turned off last weekend was the Low Energy Charged Particle (LECP) experiment, which has been operating almost continuously since the launch of Voyager 1 until now. The purpose of the experiment is to measure low-energy charged particles from the solar system and other elements such as ions, electrons, and cosmic rays.

The decision to turn off LECP was not accidental. NASA engineers agreed many years ago on the order in which equipment on Voyager 1 should be turned off to conserve the ship’s dwindling nuclear power source. Voyager 2’s LECP device has been turned off since March last year.

Because Voyager 1 is more than 24 billion kilometers from Earth, the most distant man-made object, the command sequence to turn off the device took about 23 hours to reach the spacecraft. The shutdown process also takes about 3 hours and 15 minutes to complete. Part of the LECP, the small motor that rotates the sensor in a circle to scan in all directions, still works. This unit consumes very little power, just 0.5 W, and keeping it running gives the team the best chance of turning the device back on in the future if an additional power source is found.

“Turning off a scientific device is not what everyone wants, but it is the best option currently. The team remains focused on maintaining the operation of both Voyager spacecraft as long as possible,” shared Kareem Badaruddin, Voyager mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

According to Kareem, Voyager 1 still has two active scientific instruments used to record plasma waves and measure magnetic fields. They still run very well, regularly sending back data from areas of space that no other artificial spacecraft has explored.

Voyager 1 launched into space in 1977, left the solar system on August 25, 2012, when passing through Heliopause – a region of charged particles that marks the outermost boundary of space around the Sun. Also launched in 1977 was the “twin” Voyager 2, which left the solar system in 2018. The duo uses nuclear power, is equipped with 10 identical scientific instruments and is currently the only man-made objects to reach interstellar space, meaning the data they collect is unique.