NASA revives the ‘dead’ propellants in Voyager 1 after two decades of inactivity
NASA revived the rolls of roll in the 47 -year -old Voyager 1 who were thought to be dead for two decades.
According to the Space Agency, the scientists of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the NASA, located in southern California, have reactivated a set of propellers in the spacecraft.
Roll propellers have not worked since 2004 and it is believed that they have been out of service.
These propellants are important because Voyager’s main propellers seem to have some waste that could make them obstruct. Scientists estimate that these propellers could fail as soon as the fall of 2025.
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Voyager 1 revived its propellants after almost two decades of being thought dead and out of service. (Credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH)
The antenna on the ground responsible for sending commands to Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 will be offline for several months.
Deep Space Station 43, a 230 -foot wide antenna in Australia, will be offline until February 2026 due to the necessary updates.
While that antenna is being updated, the NASA team will not be able to communicate with the twin space probes.
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The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The JPL has been working to restore propelants in Voyager 1. (NASA/JPL-CALTECH)
Suzanne Dodd, Project Manager of Voyager and director of the Interplanetary Network at JPL, said these updates are important for future Luna missions.
“These antenna improvements are important for future manned mole land landings, and also increase the communications capacity for our scientific missions in deep space, some of which are based on the discoveries made by Voyager,” DodD said in a press release.
Each trip has a set of primary thrusters that control the movement in all addresses, as well as the smallest propellants for what is called roll control.
The use of smaller propellants allows the Voyager antenna to remain aligned with the Earth, so that scientists can communicate with it.
The NASA deep space antenna in Australia is going through updates, which causes communication with Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 darkening until 2026, when the antenna is reactivated. (Stefani Reynolds/News through Getty Images)
While there is a third set of propellers, which became online in 2018 and 2019, Voyager does not have the ability to make the roll adjustments necessary to maintain a connection with the Earth.
If the Earth lost connection with Voyager 1, it would be almost impossible to restore communication.
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Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and has traveled to almost 15 billion miles away and is currently exploring the interstellar space, which is beyond our solar system.
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have traveled further than any other object made by humans. The remarkable discoveries of Voyager 1 include finding a thin ring around Jupiter, along with 2 moons that orbit the largest planet in the solar system that had not been seen before. He also discovered five moons orbiting Saturn, along with a previously unknown ring around the giant giant.
Nick Butler is News Digital reporter. Do you have any advice? Communicate with nick.butler@News.com.
Nick Butler is a News Digital latest news writer.