Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory commanded off the instrument that had helped identify the heliopause crossing thirteen years earlier, as part of a plan to stretch the falling power budget. The command took over a day to arrive. Three science instruments remained running on the spacecraft afterwards.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Voyager 1 · mission · Interstellar space, in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus · not located
- Cosmic Ray Subsystem (CRS) · technology · not located
- Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator · technology · not located
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory · organisation · United States
Evidence
Verified — Every field is supported by a cited authoritative source.
NASA Turns Off 2 Voyager Science Instruments to Extend Mission
Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem was switched off on 25 February 2025 and Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument on 24 March 2025; both spacecraft lose about four watts of generator output per year; three science instruments continued to operate on each; Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument was to run through 2025 and be switched off in 2026, and Voyager 2's cosmic ray subsystem was scheduled for shutdown in 2026, with the plan expected to keep at least one instrument running on each spacecraft into the 2030s. V55 verification basis: the release was not fetched — jpl.nasa.gov and science.nasa.gov are both blocked by this session's network egress proxy — but search results carried these specific figures and dates and attributed them to this release.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory / California Institute of Technology · 2025-03-05 · Verified
NASA JPL news release, 5 March 2025, https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-turns-off-two-voyager-science-instruments-to-extend-mission/ (also posted to the NASA Voyager blog, science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyager/2025/03/05/)
Recorded on Voyager 1
- The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
- Voyager 1 launches
- Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
- Active volcanism found on Io
- Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
- Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
- Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU
- Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
- The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations
- Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
- Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off
- Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown
- The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2
- Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The "Big Bang" power manoeuvre on Voyager 2 · 2026-07-09
- Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument is switched off · 2025-03-24
- Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown · 2026 (announced plan)
- Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth · 2026-11-18 02:16 PST (computed)
- The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations · 2013-09-12
- Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU · 2012-08-25
- Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU · 2004-12-16
- Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it · 1990-02-14