NASA’s Stunning Revival: How Voyager’s ‘Dead’ Thrusters Are Back in Action After Two Decades

NASA’s Voyager 1 has been traveling through space for almost 50 years. It’s a remarkable journey filled with challenges, including keeping its aging systems operational. Recently, engineers managed to revive a set of outdated thrusters that hadn’t worked for decades.

These thrusters will serve as backup while Voyager 1 undergoes a communication system upgrade. This upgrade involves a large antenna in Canberra, Australia, critical for sending and receiving signals with the spacecraft. Voyager 1 is currently over 15 billion miles from Earth, a distance that showcases the incredible journey of these probes.

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, shortly after its twin, Voyager 2. Both spacecraft rely on various thrusters to maintain their orientation so that antennas can stay pointed at Earth. The primary thrusters stopped functioning in 2004, and the team has depended on backup ones since then.

Kareem Badaruddin, the Voyager mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted that the team initially accepted the failure of the primary thrusters, thinking the mission might not last much longer. “They probably didn’t think the Voyagers were going to keep going for another 20 years,” he said.

Surprisingly, the probes have continued to function. Before the upcoming communication downtime, the team took a chance on reviving the primary roll thrusters. The communication pause is set to last until February 2026, with only a few brief periods of activity. The engineers’ goal was to ensure Voyager 1 could manage alone during this quiet period.

One significant risk was that the backup thrusters could fail while the spacecraft was isolated, potentially leading to problems that could end the mission. The team worked intensively on figuring out why the primary roll thrusters weren’t working. They discovered that a circuit issue could have flipped a switch, preventing the heaters from powering up.

On March 20, the team had success. The primary roll thrusters were brought back online, which was an unexpected but delightful twist. Todd Barber, the mission’s propulsion lead, expressed admiration for the team’s perseverance in solving a problem that many had deemed insurmountable.

The Voyager probes are the first human-made objects to enter interstellar space, providing invaluable data over nearly five decades. They contributed significantly to our understanding of the outer planets, revealing details about moons and rings around Saturn and Jupiter.

With years of travel behind them, the Voyagers face power challenges. They rely on heat from decaying plutonium, which generates electricity. Each year, they lose about 4 watts of power, prompting the mission team to shut down non-essential systems to conserve energy. With effective energy management, the spacecraft might continue functioning into the 2030s, reaching an impressive milestone as they celebrate their golden anniversary in space.

Experts continue to be intrigued by the Voyagers’ journey and the lessons learned from their maintenance. According to a 2022 survey by NASA, 85% of scientists believe that long-term space missions like Voyager could inform future explorations beyond our solar system. As communities online marvel at Voyager’s endurance, tweets and discussions highlight a fascination with human ingenuity and our quest to explore the cosmos.

The Voyager missions remain a testament to perseverance and innovation in space exploration. For more details on NASA’s efforts with the Voyager spacecraft, check out this official update.

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