NASA Engineers Help Prolong Voyager 2’s Science Mission | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

This ‘Ancient’ Spacecraft Keeps Defying Death—But How Much Longer Will Its Extended Mission Last?

Welcome to this edition of The Intelligence Brief… This week, NASA engineers successfully extended the operational life of the iconic Voyager 2 spacecraft through a carefully orchestrated power-saving procedure, raising new hopes that the legendary probe may continue exploring interstellar space well into the 2030s. In our analysis, we’ll examine 1) how engineers carried out the ambitious “Big Bang” operation to conserve the spacecraft’s dwindli…

NASA Engineers Help Prolong Voyager 2’s Science Mission | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Voyager 2 cheats the power budget for another year

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have eked out a little more life for instruments aboard the veteran Voyager 2 probe thanks to a power-saving effort called the "Big Bang." The procedure involved switching several powered devices at once, turning some off and replacing others with lower-power alternatives while keeping the spacecraft warm enough to function. We don't envy whoever had to press the Send button and then wait to discover…

Voyager 2 passed Neptune's moon Triton in 1989 and photographed it erupting, a discovery scientists called the flyby's biggest surprise — dark plumes rising nearly eight kilometres and then drifting 150 kilometres downwind, on the coldest surface known

When Voyager 2 flew past Neptune’s largest moon in the summer of 1989, its active, geyser-like plumes became what JPL called the most surprising find of the encounter. That matters beyond one moon. If the coldest surface known can still be visibly active, then “too cold to do anything” stops being a safe assumption about the outer Solar System. Why dead ice was the reasonable bet Before the flyby, expecting a frozen, mostly inactive Triton was n…