On Tuesday, NASA said it shut down Voyager 2's plasma science instrument—responsible for tracking the flow of charged particles—in late September. The move is aimed at prolonging the spacecraft's mission with the agency hoping to keep it operational into the 2030s.

NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin Voyager 1 after they explored the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space, or the

Voyager 1 and 2 probes are designed to travel farther into deep space than any other human-made object—but keeping their systems functional requires a power source that’s up to the task. To do that, both spacecraft rely on three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) fueled by decaying plutonium-238.

L, NASA’s Voyager 2 mission has been probing the outer bounds of the solar system at a distance of 12.8 billion miles (20.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. All that time journeying through the cosmos has taken a toll on the iconic probe,

NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft have traveled further away from Earth than any other human-made object, sending back useful science data from the edge of the Solar System. But now, having spent 47 years in space,

The mission has been working to postpone the shut-off as long as possible. Four other instruments aboard the interstellar spacecraft continue to operate.