Voyager Archives - NASA Science

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  • NASA Engineers Help Prolong Voyager 2’s Science Mission

    This artist's concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft with its antennapointing to Earth.

    Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have successfully freed up power on Voyager 2, extending how long the spacecraft can continue to do science.   Nicknamed the “Big Bang,” the effort involved simultaneously turning off certain powered devices and substituting them with lower-power alternatives while ensuring the spacecraft remains warm enough to operate.   The Voyagers get their power from radioisotope thermoelectric generators, devices that convert […]

  • NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

    An artist’s concept of a Voyager spacecraft silhouetted against a vibrant purple and teal nebula.

    On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, or LECP. The nuclear-powered spacecraft is running low on power, and turning off the LECP is considered the best way to keep humanity’s first interstellar explorer […]

  • Vintage NASA: See Voyager’s 1990 ‘Solar System Family Portrait’ Debut

    Ed Stone pointing to a screen depicting the solar system in a 1990 press conference

    In archival footage of a historic NASA news conference, the mission reveals history-making images of six planets in our solar system, including a tiny speck called Earth. This week marks 48 years since the Sept. 5, 1977, launch of NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to study Jupiter and Saturn up close. Nearly […]

  • NASA Turns Off 2 Voyager Science Instruments to Extend Mission

    Artist concept of the Voyager spacecraft in space with purple and blue background

    Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1 on Feb. 25 and will shut off Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument on March 24.

  • After Pause, NASA’s Voyager 1 Communicating With Mission Team

    On Oct. 24, NASA reconnected with the Voyager 1 spacecraft after a brief pause in communications. The spacecraft recently turned off one of its two radio transmitters, and the team is now working to determine what caused the issue.

  • Voyager 1 Team Accomplishes Tricky Thruster Swap

    A model of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft

    Engineers working on NASA’s Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft’s thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering.