NASA engineers complete nail-biting maneuver to resurrect Voyager 1's long-dead thrusters

[groundloop]

https://www.livescience.com/space/yet-another-miracle-save-nasa-engineers-complete-nail-biting-maneuver-to-resurrect-voyager-1s-long-dead-thrusters



NASA engineers have resurrected Voyager 1's half-century-old thrusters more than 20 years after they fell silent, reviving a crucial backup just months before a planned communications blackout that could have doomed the craft.

The miracle fix has bought precious time for the veteran spacecraft, enabling it to stay in operation until contact with Earth is reestablished next year.

[snip]

With the backup thrusters clogging and the antenna blackout looming, NASA engineers decided to turn to drastic measures. The craft's two heater circuits could have died out from a disturbance that flipped the wrong switch, they reasoned; getting them to work again could be as straightforward as changing this switch back.

Yet while flipping a switch sounds simple, doing so remotely on a craft hurtling through interstellar space at around 35,000 mph (56,000 kmh) is significantly less so. The faulty heaters could only be fixed if the thrusters were turned on, but if the thrusters were on and the heaters weren't, any deviation from Voyager 1's course would trigger an automatic sequence to make the thrusters fire — causing the craft to explode.

[spanone]

1. Amazing...

[Grins]

2. "... any deviation from Voyager 1's course would"

There’s a course? Going where…?

[underpants]

3. I'd think there's always a course.

It is a ship, in space not on water, but it’s still a ship.

[Disaffected]

4. Going only where it is now headed i.e. the great beyond.

There are no specific targets in mind as the craft are far beyond anything identifiable and reachable from earth. In the far distant future the two Voyagers will wander close to a nearby stars but they will have been long out of contact and dead for centuries by then.

[Xavier Breath]

6. The Delta quadrant, of course, to rescue...well, who else?

[JoseBalow]

7. "Out there... Thataway"

(0:18)

[Danascot]

10. To boldly go

where no man-made object has gone before.

[biocube]

5. Dumbass Elon and SpaceX couldnt handle this (NT)

NM

[rubbersole]

8. They're not sure if it's brain science or rocket surgery.

[area51]

9. k&r n/t

[ProfessorGAC]

11. 46 Hours To See If...

...what they do actually works!
That's got to be so nerve-wracking.