Voyager 2 cheats the power budget for another year

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have eked out a little more life for instruments aboard the veteran Voyager 2 probe thanks to a power-saving effort called the "Big Bang." The procedure involved switching several powered devices at once, turning some off and replacing others with lower-power alternatives while keeping the spacecraft warm enough to function. We don't envy whoever had to press the Send button and then wait to discover whether the commands had worked or left Voyager 2