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The Voyager 1 spacecraft underwent another "surgery" in March, 23 light-hours away from earth
(cdn.fosstodon.org)
The team had to revive a thruster used for roll control whose heaters had failed in 2004. The tubes of the backup thrusters currently in use are getting clogged and may fail this year.
The delicate operation required turning on the failed thruster and flipping a switch to enable its heater and ๐ค
All very tricky and risky operations, performed from 23 light-hours away on 1970โs era hardware.
Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data are provided by NASA and JPL. At a distance of 167.34 AU (25.0 billion km; 15.6 billion mi) from Earth as of February 2025, it is the most distant human-made object from Earth. The probe made flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's largest moon, Titan. NASA had a choice of either conducting a Pluto or Titan flyby; exploration of the moon took priority because it was known to have a substantial atmosphere. Voyager 1 studied the weather, magnetic fields, and rings of the two gas giants and was the first probe to provide detailed images of their moons. Wikipedia