NEW YORK—To save power, NASA has switched off another scientific instrument on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.
The space agency said Tuesday that Voyager 2’s plasma science instrument—designed to measure the flow of charged atoms—was powered down in late September so the spacecraft can keep exploring for as long as possible, expected into the 2030s.
NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin Voyager 1 after they explored the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space, or the space between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working long ago and was finally shut down in 2007….