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NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

science.nasa.gov

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Re: NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

#2

Post by mmooss »

> 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 they call “the Big Bang,” which is designed to further extend Voyager operations. The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data.

> The team will implement the Big Bang on Voyager 2 first, which has a little more power to spare and is closer to Earth, making it the safer test subject. Tests are planned for May and June 2026. If they go well, the team will attempt the same fix on Voyager 1 no sooner than July. If it works, there is even a chance that Voyager 1’s LECP could be switched back on.

Voyager 1 has only a year left otherwise? Also, what low-powered alternatives are there? Is there that much redundancy? I'd love to know what their idea and plan are?

Also,

> For Voyager 1, the LECP was next on that list. The team shut off the LECP on Voyager 2 in March 2025.

Why? Voyager 2 has more power to spare, per the prior quote.

Re: NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

#5

Post by bluedino »

jedberg wrote: post #4

Imagine deploying your bug fix and having to wait two days to find out if it worked!

An old timer once told me about how he would read his printouts, make new punch cards, send them over to the main office, someone would put the new cards into the system the next morning, and then read the printouts on the day after that to see if his code worked or not.

Re: NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

#7

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

mmooss wrote: post #2

> 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 they call “the Big Bang,” which is designed to further extend Voyager operations. The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-pow…

> Why? Voyager 2 has more power to spare, per the prior quote.

Because Voyager 2 has different equipment active. It still has the Cosmic Ray Subsystem active.

Re: NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

#8

Post by musicale »

jedberg wrote: post #4

Imagine deploying your bug fix and having to wait two days to find out if it worked!

HPC systems often still use batch scheduling systems where (even for a fast job) you may very well get your results the next day (or whenever your job actually runs and completes.)

It is annoying to find out that your job failed to run or exited immediately due to a typo or other minor mistake.

Of course ML training (and scientific computing) jobs can take weeks or months to complete. Checkpoint and restart features are important because node or other failures are almost inevitable.

Re: NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

#9

Post by ndiddy »

If anybody wants further context, here's an excellent paper on the status of the Voyager mission as of 2016, written by one of the engineers at JPL. It has an overview of what all the instruments on Voyager do and everything the team had done to keep the mission going as of that point. https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~pbarfuss/VIMChallenges.pdf I also highly recommend the documentary "It's Quieter in the Twilight" which is about the entire Voyager team and their efforts to keep the program operational.
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