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NEW YORK (AP) — To avoid wasting energy, NASA has switched off one other scientific instrument on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.
The house company stated Tuesday that Voyager 2’s plasma science instrument — designed to measure the stream of charged atoms — was powered down in late September so the spacecraft can keep exploring for so long as doable, anticipated into the 2030s.
NASA turned off a set of devices on Voyager 2 and its twin Voyager 1 after they explored the gasoline big planets within the Nineteen Eighties. Each are at the moment in interstellar house, or the house between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working way back and was lastly shut down in 2007.
4 remaining devices on Voyager 2 will proceed accumulating details about magnetic fields and particles. Its aim is to check the swaths of house past the solar’s protecting bubble.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 is the one spacecraft to go to Uranus and Neptune. It is at the moment greater than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) from Earth.
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The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Instructional Media Group. The AP is solely liable for all content material.
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