NASA
It was launched almost 50 years ago, space probe «Voyager 1» is not going to retire and continues to explore interstellar space with the help of NASA.
However, the spacecraft, which has long since gone beyond the Solar System and is more than 24 billion kilometers from Earth, has begun to lose vital systems that ensured its connection with the Earth. The spacecraft is traveling at a speed of more than 60 thousand km/h and has an antenna that must be accurately pointed toward the Earth at all times.
Even a slight deviation could result in the loss of data collected by the spacecraft from outside the solar system, and NASA could lose the opportunity to send commands to Voyager. The orientation motors are responsible for the precise pointing of the antenna, which control the rotation of the vehicle so that it does not go off course.
The two key engines of this orientation system stopped working back in 2004 due to the failure of two tiny internal heaters that provided fuel. At that time, NASA engineers decided that it was impossible to repair them remotely, at a distance of more than 24 billion kilometers. The engineers decided to use a backup set of engines. But over time, they began to show signs of problems as their fuel tubes gradually became clogged.
In order to avoid the threat of losing control of the probe, NASA decided to double-check what the key problem with the main engines was. Is it possible that the heaters are actually fine, and the problem was caused by some kind of failure in the power supply circuit? The engineers decided to activate the main orientation motors and then try to «revive the» heaters. The problem was that the probe’s navigation sensor, which is oriented to the reference star, could trigger these same engines in the event of a significant deviation from the course. If they were launched with the heaters inoperative, the spacecraft would explode.
In addition, the main antenna of NASA’s long-range space communications network, located in Canberra, the only one capable of sending powerful signals to «Voyagers», was to go for a long modernization in May this year. It was necessary to have the checks done in time and have a working backup by august of this year, when the antenna would be back online for a short time.
On March 20, a series of «Voyager 1» commands were sent to NASA, and a day later they received a response. Telemetry data appeared on the screens: the temperature of the heaters of the problem engines began to rise sharply!
«It was such a triumphant moment. The morale of the team was very high that day. These engines were considered dead. And it was a reasonable conclusion. It just occurred to one of our engineers that maybe there was another possible cause, and it was being addressed. It was another miraculous rescue for «Voyager»»,” says the engine specialist for «Voyager 1», — Todd Barber.
Thus «Voyager-1» continues to work and move in interstellar space not only with scientific equipment on board, but also with a golden plate containing a message to extraterrestrial civilizations. This spacecraft will undoubtedly help NASA scientists explore deep space in the future.
Source: Futurism