SHUTDOWN DATE: Still active
PURPOSE: Communications
KEY FINDING: This is the craft’s main contact point with Earth. It once sent back the robust data from the craft; today, it sends out basic information from the low-power instruments still online.
SHUTDOWN DATE: Still active
PURPOSE: Measure the magnetic fields of the Sun and the outer planets.
KEY FINDING: In 2015, the craft discovered that even past the heliopause, solar winds can redirect the magnetic field of charged particles they encounter.
SHUTDOWN DATE: 1998
PURPOSE: Monitor the composition of planetary atmospheres in ultraviolet wavelengths, which also show solar interaction.
KEY FINDING: This instrument gathered the bulk of the data regarding planetary atmospheres, helping establish what the gas giants were made of — and that Uranus and Neptune were different from Jupiter and Saturn in composition.
SHUTDOWN DATE: 1998
PURPOSE: Monitor temperature and other information inside the planets.
KEY FINDING: The IRIS instrument ...
