NASA is turning off elements of Voyager 2 to extend its mission

We have barely scratched the surface of cosmic exploration. While we can use telescopes to peer into the stars and document distant systems and galaxies, as per actually getting anything human anywhere near these distant bodies, we are very, very far off. In fact, the most distant human-made objects remain the Voyager probes, with Voyager 1 currently around 15 billion miles away from Earth and Voyager 2 around 13 billion miles away, both of which are just outside of our solar system's reach. They are so far away that transmitting a radio signal between the probes takes between 19 and 23 hours, and it has taken the two probes almost 50 years to reach the distance away from Earth that they currently are.

The adventures of both probes is coming to an end, as their power supplies are starting to dwindle and fail after 47 years in deep space. NASA is looking at ways to extend their lifespans and to continue their missions for as long as possible, and the latest effort on this front includes switching off parts of Voyager 2, reserving power to enable it to continue reporting back data and information for its admirable trip into the unknown.

In a press release, Suzanne Dodd, NASA's Voyager project manager at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, comments on this decision and what it expects this to help them achieve: "The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible. But electrical power is running low. If we don't turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission."

Considering no other human-made object has ever reached interstellar space, which is regarded as the area where our solar system's heliosphere ends, any chance to extend the Voyager missions is of the utmost importance as it could be years or decades before another probe reaches the distance that these two have achieved.