Η NASA has begun to deactivates Voyager spacecraft systems, marking the beginning of its end 50-year career of the detector
Το Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 –Two identical detectors– launched the 1977 and traveled in interstellar space to the edge of the solar system, giving humanity a closer look at its moons Jupiter and Saturn.
Now, however, the NASA must begin to limit the processes of the two "travelers" in order to continue operating until 2030. "We are 44 and a half years old", he says Ralph McNutt, physicist in the Laboratory of Applied Physics of the University Johns HopkinsAt Scientific American magazine. "So we have exceeded 10 times the warranty of the machines».
The first boat Travel has four remaining functional organs, while the Voyager 2 has five, all of which are powered by the conversion of plutonium into decomposition into electricity. The power of this battery is reduced by about four watts each year, so Nasa makes some difficult choices about what to turn off. In 2019, engineers had to turn off heating for the cosmic ray detector, a key piece of equipment for detecting when Voyager 2 was coming out of the sun - the magnetosphere, the astrosphere and the outermost layer of the Sun.
The final instruments that Nasa will deactivate are likely to be the magnetometer and plasma science instrument contained in the spacecraft's hull. These are heated by the excessive heat of the computers, while the others are suspended in a ball of fiberglass 13 meters long, which means that they may need more time to cool.
Both ships are so far from Earth that it takes a radio signal almost 22 hours to reach Voyager 1 and just over 18 for Voyager 2 - even when traveling at the speed of light.
For each day that the boat goes further, add another three to four seconds of light at this time. It also makes it more difficult for Earth to listen to communications from Voyagers. «The Earth is a noisy place", he says Glen Nagle, responsible for approach and communication at its facilities Deep Space Network in Canberra, Australia. "Radios, televisions, cell phones — they all make noise. And so it becomes more and more difficult to hear these tiny whispers from the spaceship».
However, the spacecraft's utility has far exceeded astronomers' expectations - it is expected to reach interstellar space very soon, although it will take another 300 years before it reaches the edge of the solar system.
«The amount of software on these instruments is small to none. There are no microprocessors - they did not exist then!». said the Stamatios Krimizis, Honorary Head of Space Department at Johns Hopkins APL and detector system designer Low-Energy Charged Particle [LECP] on board.
«Generally", Continues Mr. Krimizis,"I think the mission took so long because almost everything was wired. Today's engineers do not know how to do this. I do not know if it is still possible to build such a simple spaceship [now]. Voyager is the latest of its kind.»
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