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+--- Thread: NASA turns on a set of Voyager 1's thrusters after 37 years (interstellar travel) (/thread-4591.html)
NASA turns on a set of Voyager 1's thrusters after 37 years (interstellar travel) - C C - Dec 3, 2017
http://mashable.com/2017/12/02/voyager-1-thrusters-used-after-37-years/
EXCERPT: Billions of miles from Earth, at the edge of interstellar space, a long-dormant part of a far-flung spacecraft came to life this week. After 37 years of disuse, a set of thrusters aboard Voyager 1 activated on Wednesday, firing up humanity's farthest-flung spacecraft and hopefully giving it a longer life than it had before.
"With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years," Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager, said in a statement.
This additional life is important for mission controllers working with Voyager because the more data they can pull from this spacecraft, the better. As humanity's farthest probe, every piece of information beamed back to Earth is new and groundbreaking, therefore scientists are hungry for more.....
MORE: http://mashable.com/2017/12/02/voyager-1-thrusters-used-after-37-years/
RE: NASA turns on a set of Voyager 1's thrusters after 37 years (interstellar travel) - Yazata - Dec 3, 2017
They apparently still worked worked flawlessly. That's an interesting engineering experiment right there, regarding the effects of long-term exposure to space. There are potential problems like vacuum welding to worry about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cementing
RE: NASA turns on a set of Voyager 1's thrusters after 37 years (interstellar travel) - FluidSpaceMan - Dec 3, 2017
(Dec 3, 2017 06:12 AM)C C Wrote: http://mashable.com/2017/12/02/voyager-1-thrusters-used-after-37-years/
EXCERPT: Billions of miles from Earth, at the edge of interstellar space, a long-dormant part of a far-flung spacecraft came to life this week. After 37 years of disuse, a set of thrusters aboard Voyager 1 activated on Wednesday, firing up humanity's farthest-flung spacecraft and hopefully giving it a longer life than it had before.
"With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years," Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager, said in a statement.
This additional life is important for mission controllers working with Voyager because the more data they can pull from this spacecraft, the better. As humanity's farthest probe, every piece of information beamed back to Earth is new and groundbreaking, therefore scientists are hungry for more.....
MORE: http://mashable.com/2017/12/02/voyager-1-thrusters-used-after-37-years/
Cool! I guess those NASA engineers knew what they were doing way back then. The article wasn't explicit, but I guess they will use the once dormant thrusters for attitude control.
RE: NASA turns on a set of Voyager 1's thrusters after 37 years (interstellar travel) - Yazata - Dec 3, 2017
(Dec 3, 2017 06:53 PM)FluidSpaceMan Wrote: The article wasn't explicit, but I guess they will use the once dormant thrusters for attitude control.
Yeah, the thrusters that fired up were 'trajectory correction maneuver' (TCM) thrusters. I think that they are using them to keep Voyager's high-gain antenna pointed at Earth. The smaller attitude control thrusters apparently weren't working properly any longer, so they decided to try arousing these bigger thrusters that have been asleep since 1980, when they adjusted Voyager's trajectory as it passed by Saturn.
The JPL engineers reportedly had to explore the old 1970's assembly language programming to do it, and didn't know if these thrusters would work in short bursts, since they were designed for longer trajectory correction burns. But they performed as if they were put to sleep yesterday, not 37 years ago.
A propulsion engineer at JPL was quoted as saying: "The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all."
https://www.space.com/38967-voyager-1-fires-backup-thrusters-after-37-years.html