PIA16484: Location of Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument
 Mission:  Voyager
 Spacecraft:  Voyager 1
 Instrument:  Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument 
 Product Size:  3240 x 1291 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Johns Hopkins University/APL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA16484.tif (12.55 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA16484.jpg (251.3 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Click here for larger version of PIA16484
Low-energy Charged Particle Instrument
Click on the image for larger version

This graphic shows the NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft and the location of its low-energy charged particle instrument. A labeled close-up of the low-energy charged particle instrument appears as the inset image.

The instrument includes a stepper motor that turns the platform on which the sensors are mounted, so that the field of view rotates through 360 degrees. This motor was tested for 500,000 steps, enough to reach the orbit of Saturn, and has now completed over 6 million steps. The old-fashioned capacitor bank underneath the motor stores energy needed to provide a 15.7-watt pulse every 192 seconds.

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL

Image Addition Date:
2012-12-03