Overview
- Voyager 1, which saw an unexpected power drop during a roll on February 27, had its Low‑energy Charged Particles instrument shut down Friday to avoid triggering automatic undervoltage protection.
- The shutdown leaves two science instruments operating — a plasma‑wave detector and a magnetometer — and is expected to buy about a year of margin.
- Engineers left a small 0.5‑watt motor on the particle sensor running so the instrument can be more easily reactivated if extra power is found.
- NASA will test a coordinated power‑saving reconfiguration dubbed the Big Bang on Voyager 2 in May and June, with Voyager 1 targeted no sooner than July if the test succeeds.
- The probe’s nuclear power source loses about four watts each year and commands now take roughly 23 hours to arrive, so the team is triaging systems to preserve baseline measurements from the only spacecraft operating in interstellar space.