NASA's Voyager 1 probe swaps thrusters in tricky fix as it flies through interstellar space

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NASA's Voyager 1 probe swaps thrusters in tricky fix as it flies through interstellar space
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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years before joining full-time.

Jam packed issues filled with the latest cutting-edge research, technology and theories delivered in an entertaining and visually stunning way, aiming to educate and inspire readers of all ageswhen calling home. Unless Voyager 1 could make a switch to a different thruster set, the 47-year-old spacecraft would sail on alone without help from Earth. Making matters worse, Voyager 1 is so old that sudden changes could damage the spacecraft.

Luckily, each Voyager has three thruster branches available for use: two attitude branches originally designed for orientation, and one trajectory correction branch made for pathway changes in space. To be clear, engineers have been overcoming the unexpected for decades by creatively repurposing parts of Voyager. This new thruster situation, however, brought additional challenges.

JPL therefore decided to switch back to the attitude propulsion system, but they had to do so with less power available than in 2002. Voyager 1 is running on essential systems only, and even some of its heaters have turned off.

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