Nidhish Waghmare
NASA’s 1977-launched Voyager 1 spacecraft has successfully fired up its thrusters for the first time in decades, a remarkable feat of engineering and tenacity. This momentous occasion represents a critical turning point in space exploration as Voyager 1 keeps pushing the limits of human knowledge and technological capabilities. Voyager 1’s thrusters haven’t been used in decades, but NASA engineers have successfully turned them on to address a problem that could prevent the 47-year-old spacecraft from communicating with Earth from billions of miles away. Nobody predicted that Voyager 1, which launched into space on September 5, 1977, would still be in operation today.
47-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft Just Fired up Thrusters
Due to its incredibly long voyage, Voyager 1 has problems as its components deteriorate in the cold distant regions of space. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers are forced to think outside the box when problems arise while also being mindful of how the spacecraft would respond to any modifications.
Voyager 1 is currently the spaceship that is furthest from Earth, having traveled over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers). The probe’s instruments directly sample interstellar space beyond the heliosphere, the sun’s bubble of particles and magnetic fields that stretches well beyond Pluto’s orbit.
When one of Voyager’s thrusters developed a blockage in its fuel tube earlier this year, engineers discovered a problem. The thrusters’ ability to maintain the spacecraft’s stability is reduced if they become clogged. The thrusters on Voyager maintain the spacecraft’s orientation so that it can communicate with Earth.
According to Calla Cofield, Voyager 1 cannot “hear” directives from mission control or return data if it is not oriented such that its antenna is directed toward Earth. “The mission would be terminated if the thrusters that maintain the antenna’s direction toward Earth became clogged,” she stated.
The team understood that switching to a different set of thrusters would require commands to be sent to the spaceship, but it wouldn’t be an easy fix.
Persistent Issue
Voyager 1 has had to switch to a different set of thrusters on multiple occasions in recent decades. Thankfully, the spacecraft is equipped with three sets of thrusters: one set for trajectory correction maneuvers, and two sets for attitude propulsion. In 1979 and 1980, respectively, Voyager 1 passed by planets like Jupiter and Saturn using the thrusters for a variety of missions.
Over time, engineers found that a consequence of the rubber diaphragm in the fuel tank aging is silicon dioxide, which can clog a fuel tube inside the thrusters. The thrusters produce less force when they clog. When Voyager 1’s first set of attitude propulsion thrusters began to clog in 2002, the crew gave the order to switch to the second set. When the second set of thrusters looked to be clogged in 2018, engineers once more shifted to the trajectory correction thruster set.
However, upon conducting a recent status check, the team discovered that Voyager’s course correction thrusters were considerably more blocked than the two sets that had come before them. The tube hole was 0.01 inches (0.25 millimeters) across when the scientists first converted Voyager to the course correction thrusters six years ago. However, NASA reports that congestion has now decreased it to 0.0015 inches (0.035 millimeters), or half the breadth of a human hair. It was time to switch back to the thrusters used for attitude propulsion.
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