{"id":18721,"date":"2017-12-01T23:09:12","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T15:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-turns-to-voyagers-dormant-thrusters-for-first-time-in-37-years-and-they-work\/"},"modified":"2017-12-01T23:09:12","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T15:09:12","slug":"nasa-turns-to-voyagers-dormant-thrusters-for-first-time-in-37-years-and-they-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-turns-to-voyagers-dormant-thrusters-for-first-time-in-37-years-and-they-work\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA turns to Voyager\u2019s dormant thrusters for first time in 37 years \u2013 and they work!"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_381360\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-381360\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-381360\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/171201-voyager-630x515.jpg\" alt=\"Voyager spacecraft\" width=\"630\" height=\"515\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/171201-voyager-630x515.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/171201-voyager-768x628.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/171201-voyager.jpg 880w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-381360\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist\u2019s conception shows the Voyager spacecraft pointing its antenna back toward Earth. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Imagine you had a car sitting in storage since 1980, and suddenly you needed to start it up. Now imagine that it revs up like a charm as soon as you turn the key.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the scenario NASA is using as a comparison for this week\u2019s startup of a thruster system that\u2019s been sitting dormant on the&nbsp;Voyager 1 probe&nbsp;for 37 years.<\/p>\n<p>One important difference: Voyager\u2019s key had to be turned by remote control from a distance of 13.1 billion miles.<\/p>\n<p>Voyager 1 is traveling through interstellar space, 40 years after its launch on an unprecedented \u201cgrand tour\u201d of the solar system. For most of that time, NASA has relied on the attitude control thruster system to keep the spacecraft in the correct orientation.<\/p>\n<p>The attitude control thrusters deliver brief pulses, or \u201cpuffs,\u201d that last for mere milliseconds but ensure that Voyager 1\u2019s antenna remains pointed back at Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past three years, Voyager\u2019s mission managers at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been noticing that the thrusters\u2019 performance was degrading. More puffs were required to provide a given amount of energy.<\/p>\n<p>When presented with the problem, propulsion experts said the best solution was to turn to a different system traditionally used for trajectory control maneuvers, or TCM. The last time the TCM thrusters were fired up was on Nov. 8, 1980, to adjust the probe\u2019s course for its Saturn flyby.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Voyager at 40: Keep Reaching for the Stars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C1UBg4TPqX4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Voyager flight team dug up decades-old data and examined the software that was coded in an outdated assembly language, to make sure we could safely test the thrusters,\u201d JPL chief engineer Chris Jones said in a news release.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, the Voyager team essentially turned the key. They transmitted the commands for the TCM thrusters to fire up for 10-millisecond pulses and reorient the spacecraft. It took 19 hours and 35 minutes for the commands to reach Voyager 1, and just as much time for Voyager to beam the results of the test back to NASA\u2019s Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif.<\/p>\n<p>Those results, received on Wednesday, showed that the thrusters worked perfectly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Voyager team got more excited each time with each milestone in the thruster test,\u201d JPL propulsion engineer Todd Barber said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The relief and joy was felt as well at Aerojet Rocketdyne, which built the MR-103 thrusters. Much of the work on the thrusters was done at Aerojet\u2019s facility in Redmond, Wash.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/AerojetRdyne\/status\/936688195579842562<\/p>\n<p>Mission managers plan to start using the TCM thrusters routinely for attitude control in January. In order to do that, they\u2019ll have to turn one heater for each thruster, which represents a significant draw on the spacecraft\u2019s aging power system. When there\u2019s no longer enough power to operate the heaters, the team plans to switch back to the attitude control thrusters.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the backup system, \u201cwe will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two or three years,\u201d said Suzanne Dodd, JPL\u2019s project manager for Voyager.<\/p>\n<p>The Voyager team is likely to conduct a similar test for Voyager 2, the twin to Voyager 1. That spacecraft\u2019s attitude control thrusters aren\u2019t yet as degraded as Voyager 1\u2019s. But it\u2019s always a good idea to check the spare before you need it, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An artist\u2019s conception shows the Voyager spacecraft pointing its antenna back toward Earth. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech Illustration) Imagine you had a car sitting in storage since 1980, and suddenly you needed to start it up. Now imagine that it revs up like a charm as soon as you turn the key. That\u2019s the scenario NASA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[864,190,4669,3110],"class_list":["post-18721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aerojet-rocketdyne","tag-nasa","tag-nasa-jpl","tag-voyager"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18721"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}