NASA Shuts Down 49-Year-Old Voyager 1 Instrument To Keep It Alive

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]April 17th, NASA made a difficult  decision: they shut down part of the 49 year old Voyager 1 spacecraft to  keep it alive just a little bit longer.

[00:00:08]I’m gonna tell you about a trick they have up  their sleeve that might change everything.

[00:00:13]Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object  in existence. It launched in 1977—almost 49 years ago. It's now over 15 BILLION miles from Earth.  That's so far that radio signals take over 23 hours just to reach us. Voyager 1 and 2 are the  only spacecraft in interstellar space — literally beyond our solar system, sending back data from  a place no human-made object has ever been.

[00:00:37]And Voyager’s power source is slowly dying. Here's what's happening. Voyager 1 and 2 run on a nuclear battery — a radioisotope thermoelectric  generator. It converts heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. But as that plutonium  decays, the spacecraft loses about 4 watts of available power every single year. After nearly half a century, there's almost nothing left. NASA has been turning  off heaters, shutting down instruments one by one, trying to keep the spacecraft warm enough that the  fuel lines don't freeze. If the fuel lines freeze, Voyager loses its ability to point its antenna at  Earth and the mission is effectively over.

[00:01:14]On April 17th, they shut off another  instrument. The Low-energy Charged Particles experiment—LECP. It's been running almost without  interruption since 1977. And now it's off.

[00:01:26]This wasn't a panicked decision. Years ago, the  Voyager science and engineering teams sat down together and made a list. The order in which they  would shut off instruments when power ran low.

[00:01:35]They KNEW this day would come. They planned for  it and they also figured out how to keep different instruments alive between the two Voyager  spacecraft to maximize their science data. Of the 10 instruments Voyager 1 launched with, eight are  now shut off and two remain. One listens to plasma waves, the other measures magnetic fields. Mission manager Kareem Badaruddin said: 'Shutting down a science instrument  is not anybody's preference, but it is the best option available.' So what happens now? This buys them about a year. One more year of Voyager 1  exploring interstellar space.

[00:02:11]NASA is working on something they call 'the  Big Bang' — a plan to swap out power systems all at once and extend Voyager's life even  further. If it works, they might even be able to turn the LECP back on and Voyager  1’s science mission will continue.

[00:02:27]Think about this. Voyager 1 left Earth before  the first Star Wars movie came out. Before the first Space Shuttle flew and it's STILL out there,  billions of miles away, running on 1960’s and 70’s technology, sending us data from beyond the  edge of our solar system. Today's shutdown?

[00:02:43]It's not an ending. It's NASA refusing to give up  on humanity's most distant messenger. Go Voyager.