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47-year-old Voyager 1 fired up thrusters it hasn't used in decades
Engineers have mitigated an issue with Voyager 1’s thrusters, enabling the mission to stay in touch with mission controllers on Earth and send back unique data.
Engineers at NASA have successfully fired up a set of thrusters Voyager 1 hasn’t used in decades to solve an issue that could keep the 47-year-old spacecraft from communicating with Earth from billions of miles away. If Voyager 1 isn’t positioned in such a way so that its antenna is pointed at Earth, the spacecraft can’t “hear” commands from mission control or send back data, according to Calla Cofield, media relations specialist at JPL. The information collected by these long-lived probes is helping scientists learn about the cometlike shape of the heliosphere and how it protects Earth from energized particles and radiation in interstellar space.
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