NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had to turn off Voyager 1’s LECP, or Low-energy Charged Particles experiment, in a bid to reduce power consumption as its nuclear power source continues to lose power over time due to aging. According to the government agency, an unexpected drop in power levels forced the team to reduce the number of instruments on board and prevent it from activating its undervoltage protection system. This would force the spacecraft to deactivate components on its own and require manual intervention from the flight team to ensure that it can continue operating until (and, hopefully, beyond) its 50th year in space.
The LECP measures ions, electrons, and cosmic rays from our solar system and the surrounding areas, which, NASA says, “has provided critical data about the structure of the interstellar medium, detecting pressure fronts, and regions of varying particle density in the space beyond our heliosphere.” While this has been a useful instrument aboard the Voyager 1, the spacecraft is slowly running out of fuel, requiring NASA to pick and choose which ones it will leave running to increase its longevity.
