NASA has taken a crucial step to conserve dwindling power on the nearly 49-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft, continuing its historic journey through interstellar space.
The Low-Energy Charged Particles (LECP) experiment, a long-running instrument that has operated almost continuously since the spacecraft launched in 1977, has been shut down. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent commands to turn off the instrument on Friday, citing the need to conserve power and extend the spacecraft's remaining lifespan.
The move comes as the nuclear-powered probe loses about 4 watts of power each year, and mission managers work to stretch its remaining lifespan. While shutting down a science instrument is not ideal, it is the best option available, as stated by the Voyager mission manager.
Voyager 1 still has two remaining operating science instruments — one that listens to plasma waves and one that measures magnetic fields. These instruments are still working great, sending back data from a region of space no other human-made craft has ever explored.
The shutdown underscores the increasingly delicate balancing act facing the Voyager team as both spacecraft age far beyond their original mission plans. The team remains focused on keeping both Voyagers going for as long as possible.
The pressure to act intensified after Voyager 1 experienced an unexpected drop in power during a routine roll maneuver in February. Engineers feared that any further decline could trigger the spacecraft's undervoltage fault protection system, which is designed to automatically shut down components to protect the probe.
Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room. They are using the time to finalize a more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers, which they call 'the Big Bang.' The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once, turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data.
The decision to turn off LECP was not made suddenly. Mission science and engineering teams had years ago agreed on the order in which spacecraft systems would be shut down as available power declined. Of the 10 original instrument sets carried by the twin probes, seven have now been switched off.
Voyager 2's LECP instrument was shut down in March 2025. Because Voyager 1 is now more than 15 billion miles from Earth, commands take roughly 23 hours to arrive. The shutdown sequence itself takes more than three hours to complete.
