Nasa has switched off two science instruments on its long-running twin Voyager spacecraft in a bid to save power.
The space agency powered down an instrument on Voyager 1 designed to study cosmic rays last week, and on Wednesday it confirmed an instrument on Voyager 2 that measures charged particles and cosmic rays will shut off later this month.
Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd at the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the energy-saving moves were necessary to extend their missions.
The twin spacecraft launched in 1977 and are currently in interstellar space, or the space between stars.
Voyager 1 discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and several of Saturn’s moons, and Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune.
Each spacecraft still has three instruments apiece to study the sun's protective bubble and the swath of space beyond.
Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) from Earth and Voyager 2 is over 13 billion miles (20.92 billion kilometers) away.
Meanwhile, it was announced on Wednesday that the two Nasa astronauts stuck on the International Space Station are just a few weeks away from finally returning to Earth after nine months in space.
Butch Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams expected to be gone just a week or so when they launched Boeing’s Starliner capsule last June, making its crew debut after years of delay.
However, the Starliner had so many problems getting to the space station that Nasa ruled it too dangerous to carry anyone and it flew back empty.
Last month, Nasa announced the next crew would launch in a used capsule, pushing up liftoff to March 12. The two crews will spend about a week together aboard the space station before Wilmore and Williams depart with Nasa’s Nick Hague and the Russian Space Agency’s Alexander Gorbunov.
