NASA Shuts Down Major Voyager Instruments, But for Good Reason
NASA has confirmed it is turning off key instruments on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, leaving just three science instruments in operation on each spacelab. The reason: to prolong the lives of the spacecraft, which left Earth’s surface in 1977. In their infancy, each Voyager had ten instruments—ranging from cosmic ray subsystems to magnetometers—which allowed the spacecraft to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their moons in greater detail than ever before....