NASA's Big Bang power move buys Voyager 2 another year
NASA engineers have extended Voyager 2’s mission by reallocating power from nonessential systems to preserve the craft’s three remaining instruments, using a carefully balanced power-saving maneuver called the Big Bang. The reallocation should keep the instruments operating for at least another year despite shrinking RTG power. Voyager 2 is now about 13.2 billion miles from Earth, with communications taking roughly 20 hours one way, and NASA plans to apply a similar strategy to Voyager 1.
