By ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN

NEW YORK (AP) — NASA is switching off two science instruments on its long-running twin Voyager spacecraft to save power.

Related Articles

WATCH: Lava fountain height soars in latest episode of Hawaii volcano eruption

Avalanche buries at least 3 skiers near Anchorage, Alaska officials say

Former Meta official’s ‘explosive’ memoir about the social media giant to be published next week

The rise and fall of fashion pioneer Forever 21

The Supreme Court confronts a national headache: What to do with the growing pile of nuclear waste

The space agency said Wednesday an instrument on Voyager 2 that measures charged particles and cosmic rays will shut off later this month. Last week, NASA powered down an instrument on Voyager 1 designed to study cosmic rays.

The energy-saving moves were necessary to extend their missions, Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.

The twin spacecraft launched in 1977 and are currently in interstellar space, or the space between stars. Voyager 1 discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and several of Saturn’s moons, and Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune.

Each spacecraft still has three instruments apiece to study the sun’s protective bubble and the swath of space beyond.

Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles from Earth and Voyager 2 is over 13 billion miles  away.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.