🌅 NASA’s Miracle Recovery

SOURCE

NASA

WHAT TO KNOW

• Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory successfully revived a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft, unlocking a crucial backup propulsion system just six weeks before a planned communications blackout that could have doomed the 50-year-old spacecraft currently located some 15.4 billion miles away from Earth. The thrusters—which were deemed inoperable in 2004 and had been relatively dormant over the two decades since—help the spacecraft perform “roll maneuvers” that keep its antenna pointed toward the Earth to maintain reliable communication.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Voyager 1—along with its twin Voyager 2—has spent the past five decades hurtling through interstellar space at a speed of more than 38,000 miles per hour, making groundbreaking cosmic discoveries about the moons and rings of Saturn and Jupiter along the way. Voyager 1 is the first spacecraft to cross the heliosphere (the boundary where influences outside our solar system are stronger than those of our Sun) and the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The twin Voyager spacecraft are known for the “Golden Records” affixed to their bodies, which contain various sounds and images meant to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Voyager 1 is headed toward the constellation Ophiuchus; in the year 40272 AD (more than 38,000 years from now), it will come within 1.7 light years of a star in the constellation Ursa Minor, a.k.a., the Little Dipper.