Traveling at 38,000 miles per hour, Voyager 1 is currently 15 billion miles away from Earth in interstellar space. Nearly 50 years after launch, the spacecraft and its twin have been showing signs of its age. Most recently, a fuel tube clogged up one of Voyager 1's thrusters that it uses to stay oriented toward Earth in order to transmit scientific data home and receive commands from Mission Control. However, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have announced that they've successfully switched the spacecraft over to a different set of thrusters, an exceedingly delicate operation given the distance and age of the technology.
From NASA:
Switching to different thrusters would have been a relatively simple operation for the mission in 1980 or even 2002. But the spacecraft's age has introduced new challenges, primarily related to power supply and temperature. The mission has turned off all non-essential onboard systems, including some heaters, on both spacecraft to conserve their gradually shrinking electrical power supply, which is generated by decaying plutonium.
While those steps have worked to reduce power, they have also led to the spacecraft growing colder, an effect compounded by the loss of other non-essential systems that produced heat. Consequently, the attitude propulsion thruster branches have grown cold, and turning them on in that state could damage them, making the thrusters unusable.
The team determined that the best option would be to warm the thrusters before the switch by turning on what had been deemed non-essential heaters. However, as with so many challenges the Voyager team has faced, this presented a puzzle: The spacecraft's power supply is so low that turning on non-essential heaters would require the mission to turn off something else to provide the heaters adequate electricity, and everything that's currently operating is considered essential.
Studying the issue, they ruled out turning off one of the still-operating science instruments for a limited time because there's a risk that the instrument would not come back online. After additional study and planning, the engineering team determined they could safely turn off one of the spacecraft's main heaters for up to an hour, freeing up enough power to turn on the thruster heaters.
Success! Voyager 1 is again pointed toward Earth as it continues its ongoing mission to deepen our understanding of the cosmos. And to help any extraterrestrial civilization gain an understanding of us, via the golden phonograph record attached to each probe containing a story of our planet expressed in sounds, images, and science.
Previously:
• Voyager 1's incredible journey continues after NASA patches code in 46-year-old chip from a distance of 15 billion miles
• Voyager 2 will stay alive years longer thanks to new power strategy
