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Posted: |
Dec 2, 2017 - 10:18 PM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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Voyager 1 Just Fired Up its Backup Thrusters for the 1st Time in 37 Years
NASA's far-flung Voyager 1 spacecraft has taken its backup thrusters out of mothballs.
Voyager 1 hadn't used its four "trajectory correction maneuver" (TCM) thrusters since November 1980, during the spacecraft's last planetary flyby — an epic encounter with Saturn. But mission team members fired them up again Tuesday (Nov. 28), to see whether the TCM thrusters were still ready for primetime.
The mission team didn’t do this out of idle curiosity. Voyager 1 — which in August 2012 became the first human-made object ever to enter interstellar space — has long been using its standard attitude-control thrusters to orient itself into the proper position to communicate with Earth. But the performance of these thrusters has been flagging for at least three years, so mission team members wanted to find an alternative option.
The little engines passed the test with flying colors, NASA officials said."The Voyager team got more excited each time with each milestone in the thruster test," Todd Barber, a propulsion engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all."
Source: https://www.space.com/38967-voyager-1-fires-backup-thrusters-after-37-years.html
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This is pretty amazing.
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Pioneer 10 would have been the first spacecraft to leave the solar system, but Voyager 1 is traveling a great deal faster.
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Posted: |
Dec 3, 2017 - 6:58 PM
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By: |
Joe 1956
(Member)
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....I wonder how long it takes for a signal to reach the spacecraft considering it's distance from Earth?...
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/voyager-1-fires-up-thrusters-after-37
"On Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, Voyager engineers fired up the four TCM thrusters for the first time in 37 years and tested their ability to orient the spacecraft using 10-millisecond pulses. The team waited eagerly as the test results traveled through space, taking 19 hours and 35 minutes to reach an antenna in Goldstone, California, that is part of NASA's Deep Space Network.
Lo and behold, on Wednesday, Nov. 29, they learned the TCM thrusters worked perfectly -- and just as well as the attitude control thrusters."
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