NASA's Voyager 1 has unexpectedly resumed functionality after nearly 50 years in interstellar space, currently 15 billion miles from Earth. The mission team successfully revived its previously inactive primary thrusters, deemed unusable since 2004. Although backup thrusters had been operational, they lacked the necessary roll motion for orienting the spacecraft's antenna, essential for communication and navigation. This revival process required intricate programming from Earth, demonstrating NASA's commitment to keeping Voyager 1 operational, even as it faces the challenges of aging technology far from home.
It took nearly a full day for NASA to send its instructions to the probe, so the mission team was mostly left in the dark, trying to figure out whether it had worked.
"I think at that time, the team was OK with accepting that the primary roll thrusters didn't work, because they had a perfectly good backup." - Kareem Badaruddin, NASA
The spacecraft's mission team decided to see if they could fix its thrusters, which have been "deemed unusable" since 2004 and have been relatively dormant ever since.
Notably, the craft does have a second pair of thrusters that were revived in 2018 and 2019, but they're unable to induce the roll motion.
Collection
[
|
...
]