Have you ever tried starting a car that’s been sitting unused for a couple of decades?
There’s no guarantee that will even respond, let alone
actually start up. That makes the feat NASA achieved just a few days ago even
more impressive.
The space agency contacted the Voyager 1 spacecraft in
interstellar space after an amazing 37 years of inactivity to briefly activate
its thrusters.
The Voyager 1 was launched way back in 1977 to observe the
outer edges of our solar system. It occasionally communicates with NASA’s Deep
Space Network to receive routine commands and beams back data. Sometimes very
mysterious data. NASA had to interact with the spacecraft and perform a minor
course correction, firing up micro thrusters that hadn’t been activated since
1980.
“With these thrusters that are still functional after 37
years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft
by two to three years,” project manager Suzanne Dodd, said in a statement.
Since 2014, scientists have been noticing that the
spacecraft’s main propulsion systems are degrading over time. Instead, they
decided to use the backup trajectory correction thrusters to shift the probe,
which have been lying unused for decades. The tests were successful but, thanks
to how far the spacecraft is from Earth, the team didn’t even know it had
worked until 19 hours later.
However, even just a couple more years of activity thanks to
Plan B means Voyager can send back crucial data we’ve never seen before, from
deep space between our star and the nearest neighbor light years away. It’s the
farthest probe humanity has, so scientists are frothing at the mouth for its
discoveries.
Now, NASA is planning to carry out the same tests with
another spacecraft, the Voyager 2, another spacecraft moving between stars. If
it works, who knows what else we may uncover in the years to come?