A 45-year-old space traveler struggles with battery issues

Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object from Earth, is running out of power. Launched in 1977, this nearly half-century-old spacecraft has been exploring space long beyond its original five-year mission. Now, NASA engineers face a tough choice: keep Voyager alive a little longer or sacrifice some science to extend its journey. The problem started during a routine roll maneuver in late February when power levels suddenly dropped. Mission control had to act fast. Losing more power could trigger automatic shutdowns, risking the entire mission. Voyager runs on heat from decaying plutonium, but its power supply shrinks by about 4 watts every year. Over decades, that adds up. To keep the spacecraft going, NASA has already turned off non-essential systems. Now, they’ve shut down one of its last science tools.

The instrument in question, the Low-energy Charged Particles experiment (LECP), has been studying cosmic rays and particles from our solar system and beyond for nearly 50 years. It’s one of the longest-running science projects in space. Turning it off wasn’t easy. The team sent shutdown commands that took 23 hours to reach Voyager 1. The process itself took over three hours. But the decision wasn’t made lightly. Without power to spare, every watt counts. NASA isn’t giving up yet. The team plans to squeeze more life out of Voyager by switching some systems to lower-power modes in a project nicknamed “the Big Bang. ” The goal? Keep the spacecraft warm and functional just long enough to collect more data. They even left a small motor running inside LECP, hoping to revive the instrument later if power allows. For now, Voyager 1 still has two science tools working—one for plasma waves and another for magnetic fields. They’re still sending back data from a region of space no human-made object has ever explored. The mission team’s priority is clear: keep both Voyager spacecraft alive as long as possible, even if it means sacrificing parts of their historic journey.

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