Voyager 1 just fired up some thrusters for the first time in 37 years

When Voyager 1's trajectory correction maneuver thrusters last fired, Ronald Reagan had just been elected president. Over 30 years ago, about a decade into the spacecraft's journey out to the edge of our solar system and beyonde thrusters had officially served their purpose. The trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) thrusters sent out little puffs of power to correct the object's course, allowing Voyager 1 to explore Jupiter, Saturn, and several moons orbiting them. After the last course correction for Saturn on November 8, 1980, the TCMs went silent.

Last week, NASA scientists fired them up again. And 37 years after being put out to pasture, the thrusters worked. They could even extend the mission of the invaluable space probe by several years.

Voyager 1 is an important vessel. It's the fastest spacecraft we've got, traveling at around 11 miles per second. It's also the farthest. Its twin, Voyager 2, is nearly 11 billion miles away from the Sun, pushing through the last layer of our host star's influence on the space around our system. But Voyager 1 is over 13 billion miles away from the Sun, and has the incredible distinction of being the first human-made object to enter interstellar space.

Yet even from that great distance, the probe still sends messages back to Earth. That's where the thrusters come in. For decades, a set of thrusters has served to set out tiny, split-second pulses to keep the craft's antenna pointed toward us. Now those thrusters are getting old, and it's taking more effort to make Voyager 1 move. The solution? See if the TCM thrusters—which on the one hand haven't been worn out by constant use over the last few decades, but on the other hand haven't even been turned on—could take on some of the legwork.

Read More at:
https://www.popsci.com/voyager-1-thrusters

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