Mission engineers at NASA have turned off the plasma science instrument aboard the Voyager 2 spacecraft to save shrinking electrical power supply of the probe, NASA said Tuesday.

Voyager 2 was launched in 1977, 16 days before Voyager 1, and both have traveled well beyond their original destinations: Jupiter and Saturn, stretching their four-year lifespan into 47 years. Voyager 2 is now NASA's longest running mission.

Traveling more than 20.5 billion kilometers from Earth, the spacecraft continues to use four science instruments to study the region outside human heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the sun, said NASA.

NASA engineers issued the command to turn off the plasma science instrument on Voyager 2 on Sept. 26. Sent by NASA's Deep Space Network, it took 19 hours to reach Voyager 2, and the return signal took another 19 hours to reach Earth.

The plasma science instrument measures the amount of plasma (electrically charged atoms) and the direction it is flowing. It has collected limited data in recent years due to its orientation relative to the direction that plasma is flowing in interstellar space, according to NASA.

The Voyager team continues to monitor the health of the spacecraft and its available resources to make engineering decisions that maximize the mission's science output, said NASA. 

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