JPL engineers extended Voyager 2's science mission by one full year by switching off two heaters and one additional device that were consuming power solely to keep the spacecraft's electronics and fuel lines within operating temperature ranges.
The official NASA press release is thin on specifics, but The Register pressed a NASA spokesperson for technical details worth reading. The heaters in question do double duty: they keep electronics alive and maintain fuel line temperatures required for attitude control. Losing either function ends the mission. The fact that engineers found margin here, on a spacecraft launched in 1977 running on a decaying RTG, is the real story.
JPL plans to apply the same procedure to Voyager 1 next. Both probes are now in interstellar space, more than 15 billion miles from Earth, and every watt recovered from the RTG buys another window of scientific contact before both go permanently silent.
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