Voyager 2’s Plasma Spectrometer Turned Off in Power-Saving Measure
The Voyager 2 spacecraft’s energy budget keeps dropping by about 4 Watt/year, as the plutonium in its nuclear power source is steadily dropping as the isotope decays. With 4 Watt of power less to use by its systems per year, the decision was made to disable the plasma spectrometer (PLS) instrument . As also noted by the NASA Voyager 2 team on Twitter, this doesn’t leave the spacecraft completely blind to plasma in the interstellar medium as the plasma wave subsystem (PWS) is still active. The PLS was instrumental in determining in 2018 that Voyager 2 had in fact left the heliosphere and entered interstellar space. The PLS on Voyager 1 had already broken down in 1980 and was turned off in 2007. After saving the Voyager 1 spacecraft the past months from a dud memory chip and switching between increasingly clogged up thrusters , it was now Voyager 2’s turn for a reminder of the relentless march of time and the encroaching end of the Voyager missions. Currently Voyager 2 still has four