Voyager 1 is Running Out of Power. NASA Just Switched Part of It Off (npr.org) 62
After 49 years of space travel, Voyager 1 "is running out of power," reports NPR:
The spacecraft runs on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator — a device that converts heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. It carries no solar panels, no rechargeable batteries. Just the slow, steady release of nuclear warmth, which diminishes by about 4 watts each year. After nearly five decades, that decline has become critical.
During a routine maneuver in late February, Voyager 1's power levels fell unexpectedly, bringing the probe dangerously close to triggering an automatic fault-protection shutdown — a self-preservation response that would have forced engineers into a lengthy and risky recovery process. The team needed to act first. On April 17, mission engineers sent a sequence of commands to deactivate the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, known as the LECP, which is one of Voyager 1's remaining science instruments. The LECP has measured ions, electrons, and cosmic rays originating from both our solar system and the galaxy beyond it, helping scientists map the structure of interstellar space in a way no other instrument could...
Voyager 1 now carries two operational science instruments: one that listens for plasma waves, and one that measures magnetic fields. Engineers believe the latest shutdown could buy the mission roughly another year of breathing room. The team is also developing a more sweeping power conservation plan they informally call "the Big Bang" — a coordinated swap of several powered components all at once, trading older systems for lower-power alternatives. If testing on Voyager 2, planned for May and June 2026, goes well, the same procedure will be attempted on Voyager 1 no sooner than July. If it works, there is even a slim chance the LECP could once more continue to work.
The engineers say they hope to keep at least one instrument operating on each spacecraft into the 2030s. It would leave both still reporting from places no machine has ever gone before.111
Voyager 1 is now 15 billion miles from Earth, the article points out. (Radio signals take 23 hours to arrive...)
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the article.
During a routine maneuver in late February, Voyager 1's power levels fell unexpectedly, bringing the probe dangerously close to triggering an automatic fault-protection shutdown — a self-preservation response that would have forced engineers into a lengthy and risky recovery process. The team needed to act first. On April 17, mission engineers sent a sequence of commands to deactivate the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, known as the LECP, which is one of Voyager 1's remaining science instruments. The LECP has measured ions, electrons, and cosmic rays originating from both our solar system and the galaxy beyond it, helping scientists map the structure of interstellar space in a way no other instrument could...
Voyager 1 now carries two operational science instruments: one that listens for plasma waves, and one that measures magnetic fields. Engineers believe the latest shutdown could buy the mission roughly another year of breathing room. The team is also developing a more sweeping power conservation plan they informally call "the Big Bang" — a coordinated swap of several powered components all at once, trading older systems for lower-power alternatives. If testing on Voyager 2, planned for May and June 2026, goes well, the same procedure will be attempted on Voyager 1 no sooner than July. If it works, there is even a slim chance the LECP could once more continue to work.
The engineers say they hope to keep at least one instrument operating on each spacecraft into the 2030s. It would leave both still reporting from places no machine has ever gone before.111
Voyager 1 is now 15 billion miles from Earth, the article points out. (Radio signals take 23 hours to arrive...)
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the article.
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Feeding the stupid (Score:2)
Calculate the size of the required solar panel as you get farther from the sun and notice that AC is brainfarting again.
Re:Terrible (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming you're serious, at those distances there isn't enough solar light energy to do any good.
It was designed for a 5 year lifetime. Obviously it was well designed with large margins. Ahh the good old days.
Re:Terrible (Score:4, Insightful)
They're currently a bit shy of a light day out. Exactly how much energy do you think half century old solar panels would be generating if they had them?
Why don't they... (Score:1, Funny)
...just send a tech to refill the plutonium?
Re: (Score:2)
they're waiting for it to come around again on the turntable...
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Re: Properly fund NASA (Score:1)
Nasa's budget it 2.5 times more than ESA's, 5 or 6 times more than roscosmos, and almost a third higher than CNSA's stated budget.
What does "proper" funding mean to you?
Shout out (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks to all the engineers and scientists who keep this probe functioning. Keep up the amazing work.
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What's in the data? (Score:2)
It would be interesting to find out what is in the data it is collecting and if, importantly, there has been any significant change in the data collected over the last year.
Lack of solar panels makes sense (Score:3)
Where Voyager is, they would have already failed to produce enough current years ago.
Built to Last (Score:5, Insightful)
It is amazing Voyager has run this long. This isn't that classic chevy sitting in your garage. This far away solar panels probably would not be worth much.
If anything maybe a bit more plutonium would be helpful. I am sure this mission was never figured it would last this long.
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Pretty much anything past the frost line starts requiring prohibitive amounts of solar panel to get decent power, and Voyager is much, much further than that.
If you could send a refueling mission, it would be for sentimental reasons only. Any vessel you send that could catch up to Voyager would be much better utilized simply carrying a new and improved instrumentation and communications package.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Any vessel you send that could catch up to Voyager would be much better utilized simply carrying a new and improved instrumentation and communications package.
Perhaps not catch up to. But serve as a repeater at an intermediate point. If it moves fast enough, it could reduce the power that Voyager must expend to send data back.
Re:Built to Last (Score:4, Informative)
A repeater won't work, and is not the best way to solve the problem.
1. For the price of a repeater spacecraft, we can build several 70-meter antennas on Earth which are far more sensitive than any antenna we can put on a spacecraft.
2. The Voyagers are at 120 and 150 AU. For a repeater to be useful, it has to be somewhere in the middle between us and the Voyagers, so they would have to go to 60 AU. That takes 25 years.
3. The transmitters on Voyager have fixed power levels. They can be switched between 2 settings, and are using the lower power level (12 W) for most transmissions already. There's no way to reduce transmitter power below that.
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I looked it up and there is only about 20% overhead from the error correction in the signal. For a signal that weak I would have expected a lot more.
Re: Built to Last (Score:2)
Or... send out a plutonium refuel 15 years before launch, then the probe catches the refuel, ejects the old, and continues on its merry way.
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Believe me, I know how Voyager feels (Score:3)
I've been working 42 years, and I certainly feel like I might be running out of power. And that's with vacations and weekends off, which poor Voyager doesn't get (perhaps they should've joined a better union?).
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At my current rate of decay, I don't see how I'm going to make it to 42.
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Variable nuclear power? (Score:1)
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Voyager used a simpler method: pack all of the Pu-238 in close, and just radiate the excess power away.
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I have often wondered if, on space vehicles like this, they could install several packets of radioactive material separated by a moderate distance. As time passes and the radioactivity falls, compensate by moving the packets closer together to get some chain reaction going.
As far as I know, every nuclear-powered spacecraft every launched (include Voyagers) uses an RTG. The heat for producing electricity comes from the alpha decays of Pu-238. That happens at a predictable rate regardless of whether you have one big lump or several smaller lumps of equivalent mass. Bringing smaller lumps together wouldn't increase the decay rate or produce more power.
What you are alluding to is a fission reaction where, yes, bringing the fuel elements closer together can increase reaction
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IIRC when Voyager was launched the tech to communicate that far didn't even exist.
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Well off topic, but also
Why bring this up in a thread about cool space satellites anyway? You're just be
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The Voyagers transmit at 12 or 18 W. We receive those signals with the DSN, using dish antennas with a diameter of 34 or 70 meters. These days, the 70 m antennas are used most of the time.
For playback of the onboard tape recorder, all of the DSN antennas at one site are arrayed together so Voyager can transmit at 1400 bps instead of the usual 160.
Those are also used to send data to the Voyagers. For one of them, transmission is done at 20 kW. The other one had some failed component in its receiver, requirin
Out of this world. Different world (Score:3)
When this thing was engineered, CDC 6000/7000 systems were still considered supercomputers.
Today it would take over 200,000 of those supercomputers to match what one MacMini can do.
It just shows how critical smart engineers are to an endeavor like this. I'm afraid today someone would just try to prompt it into being.
Should have put an RCA 1802 in it (Score:1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Should have put an RCA 1802 in it (Score:4, Insightful)
The RCA 1802 became available in 1976, and Voyager 1 launched in 1977. They spent years designing, programming, building, testing, and finally launching in September of 1977.
When the Voyager crafts were designed, the sensors designed, the interfaces created, the software written, the memory and radio interface created, this was in the early 70s. The 1802 was at least 6 years in the future of when all the critical design choices were made. It would be used for later space probes but was not available for the Voyager series.
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The same CPU in my RCA Studio II video game system. Amazing.
Breathtaking! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fifty years in space and not only is it not dead, it's still sending back useful data decades after its expected demise. Great engineering, teamwork, and a commitment that's still alive five decades after launch. That's both touching and inspirational.
Given that our species can make Voyager happen - along with all the other exploring, discovering, and building we've done since the advent of civilization - I find it truly sad that we may be on the verge of ending it all forever.
I get that violent aggression and subjugation were evolutionarily selected as survival traits. But it's both sad and ironic that those traits may also spell the end of mankind. Wouldn't it be sad if some of the things we've launched into the great unknown are still sending data back to us when there's nobody left alive to receive it?
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Given that our species can make Voyager happen - along with all the other exploring, discovering, and building we've done since the advent of civilization - I find it truly sad that we may be on the verge of ending it all forever.
The paradox of the human brain. Minds that can do incredible things, as you point out. Minds that can exhibit great compassion and love.
Yet minds that can also make for extreme brutality and cruelty.
The technology has grown to a point where our aggressiveness might just end up ending us. Some of the usual suspects like AGW probably won't. That one will make things uncomfortable, but I doubt humanity will go extinct. Overpopulation? Nature will take care of that. Might smell pretty bad for a while. My B
human minds (Score:1)
Too bad they can not choose one over the other, or at least make it policy.
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"The paradox of the human brain. Minds that can do incredible things, as you point out. Minds that can exhibit great compassion and love. Yet minds that can also make for extreme brutality and cruelty. " Too bad they can not choose one over the other, or at least make it policy.
All of that, the good and the bad, exist in every one of us. It's a helluva thing
How? (Score:2)
The description makes it sound like the engineers can switch around all sorts of wiring and replace systems and modules, from 23hours of light speed away.
How exactly were these systems designed and what are they re-wiring, and how, to make it run even longer than ten times past its originally expected lifespan?
This sounds like an amazing feat of science and engineering!
Re:How? (Score:4, Informative)
Each system on the Voyagers can be switched on/off by the onboard computers.
There's no way to replace anything, but the main systems are redundant: There are 3 computer systems, with two main boards each. There are two radio transmitters, etc.
Re:Incredible achievments (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you talking about, we are not even maxing out newtonian physics by spending all money on wars instead of exploring the solar system and you are asking for theoretical physics? There won't be a theory that will discover "magic" so we can make things appear without spending resources developing them. We don't even spend significant money to develop viable fusion which is a surefire way to solve most of our energy problems, again that's physics well established for decades.
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What are you talking about, we are not even maxing out newtonian physics by spending all money on wars instead of exploring the solar system and you are asking for theoretical physics? There won't be a theory that will discover "magic" so we can make things appear without spending resources developing them. We don't even spend significant money to develop viable fusion which is a surefire way to solve most of our energy problems, again that's physics well established for decades.
Just a note - controlled and sustained fusion is nowhere near established. We can do the rapid and uncontained version pretty well though, and there is a big fusion reactor 93 million miles away for us to use
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Just a note - controlled and sustained fusion is nowhere near established. We can do the rapid and uncontained version pretty well though, and there is a big fusion reactor 93 million miles away for us to use
It is not a problem of theoretical physics though, which is what I was replying to. It is a matter of engineering, technology and some applied physics. As I was saying , it needs lots of resources thrown to it. And, yes, using the Sun more in the meantime is not a bad thing, but it's not nearly as transformative.
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Just a note - controlled and sustained fusion is nowhere near established. We can do the rapid and uncontained version pretty well though, and there is a big fusion reactor 93 million miles away for us to use
It is not a problem of theoretical physics though, which is what I was replying to. It is a matter of engineering, technology and some applied physics. As I was saying , it needs lots of resources thrown to it. And, yes, using the Sun more in the meantime is not a bad thing, but it's not nearly as transformative.
Theory, yes. There are some things that are pretty difficult to put into practice however. The question remains that even if we do achieve long lasting fusion that generates power, what then of the parasitic power loads. This is not a trivial problem. It may be an insurmountable problem.
The ecstatic claims that we are there, with fusion power now completely feasible, are a bit deceptive. The Qin to Qout might be 1 or somewhere a little higher, however, there is a a real issue with generating that Qin. P
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Fusion is easy. Very easy.
Sustained and controlled? That's quite difficult. Not theoretically- it's also quite easy there.
There is frankly no guarantee it will every be practically useful.
It's very easy to look up at something with 2e30kg of gravitational mass, and 93 million miles of nature's best possible insulator between us and it, and say, "see, it works there!"
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I find it amusing that you categorise "waste and abuse" separate to military spending ;)
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Send a refueling probe! (Score:2)
Or only let it fly during the day.
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What?? LOL
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I always was fond of the joke about the solar probe that only flew at night to protect it against the sun.
Almost a light day (Score:2)
After 49 years in space Voyager 1 is close to a light day away. Wow, we need to come up with better propulsion technologies if we ever plan to colonize just our own solar system alone.
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