Voyager 1 fires its thrusters after 20 years.

Something has happened that few people believed could be possible, NASA engineers have managed to activate a set of thrusters on the Voyager 1 spacecraft, the one that is furthest from Earth. Those thrusters were believed to be dead since 2004 was the last time they were used. The spacecraft is in deep interstar space and is the furthest from Earth right now and the problem with the thrusters is that the ones that are currently working may fail soon, because they are already old, they are already worn out, so it is necessary to restore them. that had not been working for 20 years has been an incredible task.

It has combined ingenuity, risk and talent and some art, because engineering also has some art, all of this is very important because the main thrusters currently in use show signs of obstruction by debris and could stop working at any time, it is estimated that they will last until the fall not much longer.

So that is why these backup thrusters needed to be reactivated at least before May 4, the date on which the ground antenna that is responsible for sending commands to Voyager 1 and 2 is going to be out of service for several months due to some updates, so we will not hear from these two ships for a few months either.

These ships were launched in 1977, they sail through space at 56,000 km per hour, but that speed is not due to the thrusters. Be careful, the speed was achieved thanks to gravitational assistance with the planets of the solar system. The thrusters are necessary to make small adjustments in order to maintain the correct orientation of the antennas towards our planet. important.

Voyager 1 is currently about 24.9 billion kilometers from Earth and Voyager 2 is about 20.8 billion kilometers away. It can be said that they travel through interstellar space but have not yet experienced the gravitational influence of the sun, as far as the solar wind reaches.

The ship's control team hopes that there will be enough energy left so that at least one last scientific team, one of those teams that continues to send data to Earth about what these ships are finding on that trip to Interstellar space, can continue operating until the 2030s. Then there will be one last message followed by infinite silence and the ships will transform into a piece of cold metal traveling through space perhaps for all eternity, if the term eternity can exist in this changing universe where we live.

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