Voyager 1 has surprised the scientific community after recovering some thrusters that were considered lost in 2004! Against the clock and risking its own “life” because it was executed just before the only antenna that could communicate with it went into maintenance.
But no, it’s not a miracle! It was a brilliant move by the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who combined calculations, technical memory, and trust in the probe that has become a living legend of space exploration!
What is Voyager 1
Surely it rings a bell, it’s an unmanned space probe that was launched from Earth in 1977!
NASA was the one who went all in on this probe, and its goal was to explore the outer planets of the solar system. So much so, it’s the human-made object that has travelled the farthest, it’s now travelling through interstellar space (beyond the light of our Sun).
Voyager 1 carries a record with information about Earth in case it encounters an unknown civilization. For example, it includes greetings in 55 different languages (just in case aliens speak Sumerian), natural sounds from our planet, and a music selection with various folk songs from different cultures and classical works by Beethoven, those couldn’t be left out.
And what has this probe done? Let’s keep in mind that it’s 25 billion kilometers away from Earth, travelling at 56,000 km/h just to keep its main antenna pointed at us and be able to send us the data it records. To do this, it uses three types of movement: pitch (up and down), yaw (left to right), and “roll”, the last of which allows the spacecraft to spin on its own axis to orient itself and calibrate its magnetometer.
Well, these roll thrusters hadn’t worked for over 20 years, with their fuel frozen and the spacecraft’s nozzle unusable. At the time, NASA decided the failure was irreparable and switched to the backup thrusters because they didn’t think Voyager would still be a champion 20 years later.
What happened 20 years later? Logically, the lines of the backup thrusters also began to clog, putting the entire mission at risk because it would make it impossible to keep receiving data from it.
The Voyager team, led by Kareem Badaruddin, reexamined the 2004 failure looking for an emergency rescue plan. But… could they fix it before the Canberra antenna went into maintenance?