![]() Heaters and other spacecraft systems have also been turned off one by one as part of power management. ![]() Because of this diminishing electrical power, the Voyager team has had to prioritize which instruments to keep on and which to turn off. The radioisotope thermoelectric generator on each spacecraft puts out 4 watts less each year. Voyager 2 is expected to keep its current suite of science instruments on through 2020. Voyager 1 is expected to keep its current suite of science instruments on through 2021. What instruments on the spacecraft are still working and what have been turned off? While you could still see some brighter stars and some of the planets with the cameras, you can actually see these stars and planets better with amateur telescopes on Earth. In addition, it is very dark where the Voyagers are now. Even if mission managers recreated the computers on the ground, reloaded the software onto the spacecraft and were able to turn the cameras back on, it is not clear that they would work. The cameras and their heaters have also been exposed for years to the very cold conditions at the deep reaches of our solar system. The computers on the ground that understand the software and analyze the images do not exist anymore. Mission managers removed the software from both spacecraft that controls the camera. 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. It is possible for the cameras to be turned on, but it is not a priority for Voyager's Interstellar Mission.
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