Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years (nasa.gov)

If you tried to start a car that's been sitting in a garage for decades, you might not expect the engine to respond. But a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft successfully fired up Wednesday after 37 years without use. NASA announces: Voyager 1, NASA's farthest and fastest spacecraft, is the only human-made object in interstellar space, the environment between the stars. The spacecraft, which has been flying for 40 years, relies on small devices called thrusters to orient itself so it can communicate with Earth. These thrusters fire in tiny pulses, or "puffs," lasting mere milliseconds, to subtly rotate the spacecraft so that its antenna points at our planet. Now, the Voyager team is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980. "With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years," said Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Comments

Now THAT is amazing

[SuperKendall]

That honestly boggles the mind to think of something built so long ago, sitting in the harsh environment of space still able to function that well - not to mention all of the other hardware working well enough to instruct the thrusters to fire. Well done.

Re:Now THAT is amazing

[nmb3000]

What's harsh about space other than it being relatively cold?

What comes to mind:

A temperature of minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit (only about 5 degrees above absolute zero). Many materials and electrical components do not behave or age the same when subjected to decades of extreme temperatures and it wouldn't be a surprise at all to find some materials slowly getting brittle or changing shape or thermal or electrical conduction.

Radiation. A complete lack of protection from a planet's magnetic field or atmosphere means every single gamma ray heading the right direction hits it, hence the shielding and hardened components used to build the satellites. Maybe this drops off as it moves away from the sun, but we really don't know what the nature of space beyond the sun's immediate influence looks like.

Heat dissipation. No atmosphere means there is no convection so all heat must be dissipated via radiation emissions, which can be very slow. This means if you have hot spots in your electronics or the RTG power system without proper heat sinks, it can build up to a thermal failure.

And in space, no one can hear you scream.