Why did the camera on Voyager-1 shut down?
Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object from Earth, traveling at a speed of about 17 kilometers per second, captured the world’s imagination with its iconic images of the outer planets. One of its main goals was to take pictures of the solar system and send them back to Earth.
However, in 1990, after completing its primary mission, Voyager 1’s camera system was shut down. This decision was made with careful consideration for the spacecraft’s long-term sustainability and its ongoing mission of scientific exploration.
Voyager 1 has a camera system that consists of four cameras: two on the front and two on the back. The cameras are designed to capture images of distant objects, such as stars, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and interstellar space. The cameras also have a special feature called “Murmurs of Earth”, which allows them to transmit images directly to Earth without using up any of the spacecraft’s limited memory or power. That’s a topic for another post.
The camera system was very successful in its mission. It took over 2,000 images with some of the most famous images including Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Saturn’s rings, Neptune’s dark spots, Pluto’s surface features, and a mysterious object called “Oumuamua”, which was detected in 2017 as the first interstellar visitor.
After Voyager 1 took its last image (the “Solar System Family Portrait” in 1990), the cameras were turned off to save power and memory for the instruments expected to detect the new charged particle environment of interstellar space.
Voyager 1’s power source, radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), gradually degrade over time. As the spacecraft ventured further into the depths of space, the amount of power available from the RTGs diminished. To ensure that Voyager 1 could continue functioning for as long as possible, NASA engineers had to prioritize the use of its limited power resources.
The camera system was a significant consumer of power. Turning off the cameras allowed NASA to conserve precious energy for other essential instruments, including those responsible for collecting scientific data about the interstellar environment.
Voyager 1’s onboard storage capacity was limited, mission managers removed the software from the spacecraft that controlled the camera and freed up memory for storing scientific data collected by other instruments.
This decision was important as Voyager 1 ventured into interstellar space, an unexplored region where new discoveries were expected and the images obtained may not be as scientifically valuable as the data collected by other onboard instruments. The main focus now is on using other instruments on board Voyager 1 to study interstellar space and its potential for life.
At the time of writing this article, Voyager 1 is 15 billion (15,125,758,345+) miles away from earth. It is expected to keep operating until at least 2051, when it will run out of power. By then, it will have traveled more than 23 billion kilometers from Earth, or about 40% of the distance between Earth and Pluto. It will also have crossed into interstellar space, becoming one of only two spacecraft ever to do so (the other being Voyager 2).
