Engineers are confident that shutting down the LECP will give Voyager 1 about a year of breathing room. They are using the time to finalize a more ambitious energy-saving fix for both Voyagers they call “the Big Bang,” which is designed to further extend Voyager operations. The idea is to swap out a group of powered devices all at once — hence the nickname — turning some things off and replacing them with lower-power alternatives to keep the spacecraft warm enough to continue gathering science data.

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[–] 104 points 4 months ago (6 children)

RTGs are subject to the issue of half-life - this is a consequence of that type of power source. Though, let’s be honest: we do not have any other sort of power generation technology that would be viable for literal decades on an interstellar space probe. And we definitely didn’t have a better alternative when they were launched.

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  • [–] 76 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    For roughly three milliseconds I thought to myself they shoulda used solar panels instead.

    "Oh, wait...."

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  • [–] 40 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Well they could power a lamp that shines on the solar panels.

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