Engineers at NASA say they have successfully revived thrusters aboard Voyager 1, the farthest spacecraft from our planet, in the nick of time before a planned communications blackout.
A side effect of upgrades to an Earth-based antenna that sends commands to Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, the communications pause could have occurred when the probe faced a critical issue — thruster failure — leaving the space agency without a way to save the historic mission. The new fix to the vehicle’s original roll thrusters, out of action since 2004, could help keep the veteran spacecraft operating until it’s able to contact home again next year.
Voyager 1, launched in September 1977, uses more than one set of thrusters to function properly. Primary thrusters carefully orient the spacecraft so it can keep its antenna pointed at Earth. This ensures that the probe can send back data it collects from its unique perspective 15.5 billion miles (25 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space, as well as receive commands sent by the Voyager team.
We need so much more money for NASA.
alas, public funding of actual technological wizardry steals eyeballs away from the social sideshow, so… *snip*
And science in general. Those NIH cuts are insane.
For anybody else curious;
Voyager 1 uses hydrazine (N₂H₄) as fuel for its small attitude control thrusters. Hydrazine is a hypergolic monopropellant, meaning it doesn’t require an external oxidizer—it decomposes exothermically upon contact with a catalyst, producing gas to generate thrust.
The thrusters are not used for propulsion, but rather to rotate and stabilize the spacecraft so that its antenna remains pointed toward Earth and its instruments can be properly oriented. Fuel consumption is extremely low—only a few grams per year—and Voyager 1 still has some hydrazine left, although it’s running low. Once the hydrazine is depleted, the spacecraft will no longer be able to control its orientation, which means communication with Earth will cease.
The Voyager spacecraft have no engines for linear acceleration; instead, they follow the trajectory and speed gained from gravity assists during planetary flybys in the solar system.
That’s cool, but forget the thrusters, how is the battery pack on that thing still keeping it powered!?
Half life of the plutonium isotope they used is about 88 years.
The spacecraft uses radioisotope thermoelectric generators. It converts the heat generated by radioactive decay of plutonium into electricity. Engineers have been able to keep it working all this time by selectively powering down unused systems.
The answer to that is actually really interesting.
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i just did some napkin maths, and currently, it is approximately 1 light day away from us (23.148 hrs, no relativistic consideration). For perspective, our nearest star is 4.25 light years away, and that is roughly 302.319161 times further than voyager. with voyager speed, it will reach centauri (not actually heading towards it, but just for distance perspective) in about in roughly 14511.319728 years (actually less than this).
edit - messed up the calc a bit, 302… should have been 1608.346293 and 14511… shoul dhave been 77200.622084, explanation in replies - root of errors - typo
Umm akhchually the nearest star is just 8 light minutes away fixes glasses
Much closer if you live near Elton John.
I do live near him. In fact, I happen to live on the same planet!
well you are techincally correct, the best kind of correct
snort
space is nuts.
Only a small portion of space is almonds, walnuts, and so on, less than half
much less than half
Is that before or after adjustment for the theoretical Macadamia Nebula?
you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s
Also interesting
That doesn’t make sense though. How’d you get to 302? 302 times farther should only be about 302 light days away. It should be 365x4.25=1,551.25 light days farther from us.
That bit of the napkin has a smudge.
sorry, i messed up calculation
= (25*(10^9)*1000/(3 * 10^8))/(3600) 23.148148 = (4.25*365)*24/123.148 302.319161the 123.148 should have been 23.148, i somehow got a extra 1 in there, so that reduced final value by nearly 5 times, hence i got ~300 days instead of ~1500 days
sorry, then number of days should be 1608.346293 (24/23… * 365*4.25), and total time to reach there is 77200.622084 years (it should be less than this)
Keep trucking little buddy!
I’m curious, do the same people who think that the moon landing was faked also believe that Voyager is fake? Because to me, Voyager is more impressive at this point.
Let’s be honest, why would they believe it was real? Literally the only piece of evidence any of them might have even heard of from Voyager would be the Pale Blue Dot, and they would just say “wow, someone poked some holes in a blanket with some lens flare”. All of the planet pictures can be explained away as artists’ renditions.
ETA: Also, if you haven’t seen it by now, I recommend watching the film “behind the curve” to understand the level of willful self-delusion in which this sort of person engages, all to feel like they belong and their perspicacity is recognized by their chosen in-group.
I’m always amazed at the shit they do at NASA to keep Voyager 1 running.
This is about roll thrusters that permit orientation that allows communications/operation from earth. How many years of fuel does it have for roll thrusters, and does it share fuel with propulsion thrusters, and is there any thought of making it go faster instead of staying operationally controllable?
Voyager has no propulsion thrusters. It got its velocity from planetary fly-by’s and that’s it. It can only turn itself, it has no other thrusters.
On its current trajectory, will it ever reach anything “interesting” again?
There’s always a chance to get swallowed by a wormhole and get retrofitted by a machine civilization.
I mean that could happen without a wormhole, no? At this distance it would be impossible to see them unless they were huge.
if you mean planets, stars,etc… not while it can still communitcate. It might run into something in 10’s of thousands of years :P
What would be the benefit of going faster over being able to communicate with it?
How many years of fuel it has left depends fully upon how that fuel needs to be used to maintain orientation with Earth; there’s no specific answer.
What would be the benefit of going faster over being able to communicate with it?
To show alien invasion force where to come exterminate us???
I don’t know. Is there an ultimate destination?
It’s already completed its main mission. At this point, its mission is to observe and report. If the fuel was redirected to acceleration, that would effectively mean abandoning that mission in favor of… something.
