It’s been 47 years since the twin Voyager spacecraft started their historic mission. Having travelled through interstellar space, farther from Earth than any other human-made objects, their nuclear batteries are depleting — but NASA is taking measures to squeeze as much life out of the aging probes as possible.

Voyager 1 — launched in 1977 and now over 15.6 billion miles from Earth — started out with 10 science instruments, but now has just three running after NASA turned off another gadget to conserve its finite nuclear fuel supply. And later this month, the space agency's engineers will turn off another instrument on its exploration sibling, Voyager 2.

Mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1 on Feb. 25 and will shut off Voyager 2's low-energy charged particle instrument on March 24.

NASA is switching off two science instruments on its long-running twin Voyager spacecraft to save power. The space agency said Wednesday an instrument on Voyager 2 that measures charged particles and cosmic rays will shut off later this month.

The twin probes should operate for about a year before the team is forced to shut off yet more instruments. The Voyager spacecraft have been cruising through interstellar space for more than 47 years,

NASA has taken the decision to shut off two more instruments on the iconic Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, in order to extend their missions a little further. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft have traveled farther away from Earth than any other human-made object,

A pair of extraordinary space missions that have been headed out of the solar system for almost half a century are getting a new lease on life as NASA engineers order the Voyager 1 and 2 deep-space probes to shut down two instruments to save power.