NASA engineers have shut down another instrument on Voyager 1 to preserve the power of the most distant spacecraft ever sent into space.
The Low-energy Charged Particles experiment (LECP) was turned off on Friday (April 17) to ensure Voyager 1 has more time available to continue its exploration of space beyond the solar system.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 left the solar system on August 25, 2012, passing a bubble of charged particles called the Heliopause that marks the outer limit of the sun's cosmic backyard. As of this month, the spacecraft is the most distant man-made object from Earth at over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away.
