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Once ‘dead’ thrusters on the farthest spacecraft from Earth are in action again

  • NASA engineers revived Voyager 1's original roll thrusters, which had been inactive since 2004, to maintain control of the spacecraft 15.5 billion miles away in interstellar space.
  • The revival came as the backup thrusters face clogging issues that could cause failure as soon as this fall, threatening the mission if Voyager 1 loses roll control.
  • Voyager 1 launched in 1977, relies on multiple thrusters for attitude control, and continually sends data back while receiving commands via an Earth-based antenna undergoing upgrades.
  • Voyager mission manager Kareem Badaruddin said the team accepted the original thrusters were dead due to heater power loss but had confidence in the backup system, making the fix a critical success.
  • The thruster fix buys time for Voyager 1 to operate through upcoming communications blackout and supports deep space science missions, reflecting high team morale and ongoing mission resilience.
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astrobiology.com broke the news in on Wednesday, May 14, 2025.
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