Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years

Thethrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft just did what we thought was impossible. After 37 years of inactivity,NASA just received response from spacecraft 13 billion miles away, NASA said in a statement on its website. Voyager 1 is NASA’s farthest and fastest spacecraft.

It waslaunched on September 5, 1977. Having operated for 40 years, 6 months and 14 days as of March 19, 2018, the spacecraft relies on small devices called thrusters to orient itself so it can communicate with Earth. These thrusters fire in tiny pulses, or “puffs,” lasting mere milliseconds, to subtly rotate the spacecraft so that its antenna points at our planet.

Now, the Voyager team is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980.

Source: techstartups.com