Voyager 1 Just Fired Up Thrusters It Hasn’t Used in Decades
Ashley Strickland, reporting for CNN:
Engineers at NASA have successfully fired up a set of thrusters
Voyager 1 hasn’t used in decades to solve an issue that could keep
the 47-year-old spacecraft from communicating with Earth from
billions of miles away. […]
As a result of its exceptionally long-lived mission, Voyager 1
experiences issues as its parts age in the frigid outer reaches
beyond our solar system. When an issue crops up, engineers at
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have to
get creative while still being careful of how the spacecraft will
react to any changes.
Currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1 is about
15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away. The probe operates
beyond the heliosphere — the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and
particles that extends well beyond Pluto’s orbit — where its
instruments directly sample interstellar space.
Michael Chabon, on Threads:
I find the continuing mission of Voyager 1 so moving, for the way
its name alone evokes a time of promise, for the thought of that
tiny contraption way out there in the vastness at the edge of the
heliosphere — perhaps the farthest any human-made thing may ever
travel — a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work it
was purposed to do.
An amazing feat of engineering five decades ago, kept going by amazing feats of engineering today.
★
Ashley Strickland, reporting for CNN:
Engineers at NASA have successfully fired up a set of thrusters
Voyager 1 hasn’t used in decades to solve an issue that could keep
the 47-year-old spacecraft from communicating with Earth from
billions of miles away. […]
As a result of its exceptionally long-lived mission, Voyager 1
experiences issues as its parts age in the frigid outer reaches
beyond our solar system. When an issue crops up, engineers at
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have to
get creative while still being careful of how the spacecraft will
react to any changes.
Currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1 is about
15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away. The probe operates
beyond the heliosphere — the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and
particles that extends well beyond Pluto’s orbit — where its
instruments directly sample interstellar space.
I find the continuing mission of Voyager 1 so moving, for the way
its name alone evokes a time of promise, for the thought of that
tiny contraption way out there in the vastness at the edge of the
heliosphere — perhaps the farthest any human-made thing may ever
travel — a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work it
was purposed to do.
An amazing feat of engineering five decades ago, kept going by amazing feats of engineering today.