Voyager 1 Thrusters Out Since 2004 Are Back

broknsymetry

In a procedure that could have caused a catastrophic end to its mission, JPL engineers have revived the roll thrusters on Voyager 1 that have been inoperable for over 20 years…

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have revived a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft that had been considered inoperable since 2004. Fixing the thrusters required creativity and risk, but the team wants to have them available as a backup to a set of active thrusters whose fuel tubes are experiencing a buildup of residue that could cause them to stop working as early as this fall.

https://astrobiology.com/2025/05/voyager-1-interstellar-probe-revives-backup-thrusters-before-command-pause.html

Astyanax

There must be some seriously old geezers still working at JPL there coding the FORTRAN and assembly language to make that all work.

CrashMan

Weird that they now refer to this as an interstellar probe as it will be dead long before it comes close to any other star.

MacLeech

CrashMan it’s interstellar because it’s traveling faster than solar escape velocity and it’s also beyond the heliopause. It’s not coming back.

telcodad

And let’s not forget the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions, which are credited with laying the foundation for future missions, including Voyager 1 and Voyager 2:

Pioneer 10 and 11, outer solar system explorers
The Planetary Society
https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/pioneer

Though it launched second, Pioneer 11’s mission ended first. The probe transmitted its final signal to Earth in 1995; Pioneer 10’s last signal was detected in 2003.
:
Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter on December 3, 1973 and is now headed in the direction of the star Aldebaran, which it’s expected to reach in roughly 2 million years.
:
After its rendezvous with Saturn, Pioneer 11 sped off toward the center of the Milky Way — a one-way course it remains on to this day.

Dks01

V’ger lives…