NASA keeps ancient Voyager 1 spacecraft alive with Hail Mary thruster fix NASA has revived a set of thrusters on the nearly 50-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft after declaring them inoperable over two decades ago. It's a nice long-distance engineering win for the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, responsible for keeping the venerable Voyager spacecraft flying - and a critical one at that, as …
A mild rant: Musk has the gall to call his rocket "Starship" and his SpaceX company town "Starbase," even though there's no chance that any of his works will ever get closer to some other star than to Sol. The Voyagers are almost one light-day distant from us; Elon's eccentricities have never made it as far as one light-second. His "Star"-stuff is as suitably named as is "Full Self-Driving."
"A mild rant: Musk has the gall to call his rocket "Starship" and his SpaceX company town "Starbase," even though there's no chance that any of his works will ever get closer to some other star than to Sol."
It's just marketing BS, which is bad enough under normal circumstances, but this is US corporate marketing bullshit. Starliner[*] anyone?
* Although the initial announcement of a fully reusable system soon to be named Starship was before Boeing Starliner was announced, I'm not sure if it was named before Boeing chose "Starliner" for their updated Apollo capsule or after.
"Agreed. Hope they avoided being Wood-chipped by Musk’s DoGE Tweens. V’ger n’all anyway…"
Me too, and was wondering if they might be taking higher risks based the possibility of JPL, or at least this team, being DoGE'd out of existence, ie let's try something that may work or go bang, what have we got lose? Especially since doing nothing would leave V'Ger with a very short outlook on life anyway.
I’ve been following the Voyagers since their launch. I remember well the stunning pictures of Neptune returned by Voyager 2 in the early 1990s.
Every time I hear they are still sending data it makes me happy. Congratulations to the engineers who keep them going.
Before "right-sizing", offshoring, better, faster AND cheaper, etc.
I think of my engineering career (yeah, computers, 'cause I was terrified of diff-e) and compare it to the careers of those who have gone before me, and think that THEY were Real Engineers, I'm just using computers as a crutch and faking it. I caught my boss writing out an equation for the impedance of a fairly complex array of passives, and wondered if I could even get started on it (it's been a long time since I had to do that in school).
Engineering used to be a LOT tougher...
No, no, no, you are putting yourself down.
Computers are a tool, no different to a slide rule or even a pencil and paper. They don't solve the problem for you.
It's understanding the problem, and using the right tools to solve it, do you 'get' the problem? Do you understand what needs to be done to solve it? Can you use the available 'tools' to do this?
If 'yes', then you are, absolutely, are, an engineer!
The first flybys of the big planets were really amazing and these two probes operating in vacuum with incredibly low temperatures is just astonishing. Even more incredible is that they still have thruster fuel.
Even more amazing than the Voyagers, is that someone went to the trouble to write a script that automatically gives me a thumb down for everything I post! :)
'Nomad'
The episode was called 'The Changing' and it was Kirk that persuaded the device that it needed, logically, to destroy itself.
Fun fact. the plot of this story was to have been reused for the pilot episode of a new Star Trek TV series; 'In Thy Image' when that was scrapped the basic idea was used for Star Trek The Motion Picture.
supporting something over 15 million miles away is something else. I hope a few of these were on NASA after that success. --->
Also a good reminder that backup systems in the right places can keep stuff going far beyond any conceivable life expectancy.
Nah, you'd be fine. Those units emit alphas, easily shielded against. [0]
Initially, the RTGs were to provide (according to Wikipædia) 157W of electrical power, halving every 87.7 years. However, they generated about 2.4 KW of heat. After ~fifty years, they'd be down to 2.4 * (0.5)^(50/87.7) = 1.6 KW. Still enough to toast bread. And there are three per spacecraft, so you could have a three-slice toaster.
[0] Though now that I think of it... I suppose there may be impurities?
Of course, only 0.5^(50/87.7) = 67% of the plutonium-238 is still intact. The other ~33% has decayed to U-234, which is also an alpha emitter, but with a half-life of about a quarter million years. So that shouldn't be a problem.
On further thought, your greatest risk might be that the RTG is physically coming apart a bit, such that some bits of the Pu-238/U-234 mix come out onto your toast. If that happens, you may be toast.
lol, I'm 60 and have my Grandfather's toaster. he showed me how to fix the one solder joint that used to melt off every 10 years. I fixed it last maybe 20 years ago with better solder.
Push the lever down "zzzzzzzt" and it starts going back up 'tic, tic, tic tic~~~~ faster and faster till it pops. Love that old thing. Reminds me of my grandparents.
Some time back, there was a discussion in these fora of toaster reliability, and I mentioned this article :
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/your-toaster-will-eventually-fail/
Apparently, the heating elements used 'way back when used more corrosion-resistant metals (Nichrome, etc.). The article comments that "...It seems that modern toasters are the kitchen equivalent of printers—everything in the category is pretty crappy."
I guess we shouldn't buy toasters from HP. (Unless they're about three decades old.)
...the Voyagers, and I, remain operational at least long enough to see Voyager 1 reach the magic 'One light-day' distance.
According to this and my dodgy mathematics, Voyager 1 is at %96 of that distance.
I haven't bothered to look at the rate at which the distance is increasing in a while. so I'm not entirely sure how long I have to last :-) Last time I checked, ISTR I got a date of January or February 2027.
As of 2025-09-05, it seems Voyager 1 is at 82994 light-seconds.
Note to self : check more regularly.
Note to El Reg : Schedule an epic on the IT/Human collaboration required to get the Voyager 1 to one light-day NOW.
My maths puts it at just under 2 years away as well.
But I haven't delved into the specifics such as how many times it will make that transition - with Earth's orbit, for part of the year the distance is actually decreasing, so it may cross the threshold, then get closer and cross it again.
"But I haven't delved into the specifics such as how many times it will make that transition "
Yes, that's fine, but it only has to do it once, just once for us commutards to think 'there is a human made object so far away right now that it takes light a day to get there'
I'd like to think that all of humanity could take that on board, if only for a brief period before resuming killing each other - I'm going to be disappointed, aren't I?
This post has been deleted by its author
OP of 'Here's hoping that' here...with a Mea Culpa.
In my rush to use an unambiguous date format, I wrote "2025-09-05" in error. What I SHOULD have written was "2025-05-09", i.e. 9th May 2025, NOT the original (and future!) September 5th 2025.
All hail ISO8601 (When used correctly, that is)!
I thought that question sounded familiar... I'll recycle my answer from a year back.
(For Voyager 2, the equivalent date would be 2035 Nov 1, and it again happens only once. Pioneer 10 and 11 and New Horizons have some years to go. That's all we have for tracked objects launched into interstellar trajectories.)
Weeeellllll, arguably yes the radio is the most important signal because without that there would nothing coming from the probe. But according to https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1-and-voyager-2-now/ there are three instruments still working on voyager 1 and I presume, still sending back data.
Does it even matter if the instruments are still sending data?
Voyager is fulfilling a role which was not part of the original mission - to teach us how to make decisions and keep remote spacecraft operational beyond their intended service life.
The topic of this article is a great example. Thrusters which were previously declared non-operational were utilized successfully. What can be learned from the previous decision to deactivate the primary thrusters? Were the engineers in 2004 too hasty & risk adverse? Did they not explore the possible solutions fully at that time? Voyager has become a learning center for procedures, policies, and analysis that will be used to make better decisions on missions in the distant future.
Consider that while orbiting spacecraft like Hubble can be physically serviced, James Webb Space Telescope is at a Lagrange point and inaccessible. Lessons learned from Voyager may some day be applicable to keeping JWT (and other deep space missions) alive and useful long after its expected service life ends.
Sure. But I'm with MMcF: that is an important lesson and this experience needs to be highlighted in the training of future flight controllers. With hindsight, it is obvious that that was the right process. But nothing wrong with reminding people of the obvious on occasion!
Ever, ever so slight Pedant Alert
JWST is an orbiting spacecraft, just not orbiting the Earth!
But I know what you mean, however with current technology is Hubble actually serviceable?
What do we have now that could do it? A Dragon capsule, Starliner (?), beg the Russians for a Soyuz. Hubble orbit about 100Km above the ISS, so I suspect that any of the above could reach it and return; but do they have enough life support capacity to get there, properly check the situation, deal with any the issues that might arise (something as trivial as a bolt is stuck and needs a bit more thought). Can they carry the spare parts needed, etc?
I suspect that right now despite Hubble being only c. 500 Km away rather than 15 million Km, realistically it's no more serviceable.
"Were the engineers in 2004 too hasty & risk adverse? Did they not explore the possible solutions fully at that time?"
According to the article, when they turned on the heater switches, there was the chance it would work or go bang. I think being risk averse when there was a reliable option in the backup thrusters was the correct path to take. This time around, it was the backup that likely only had a few months or working life left after which it would be "lost" anyway, so taking the risk of it works or it goes bang was a much lower risk than certain and imminent loss of thruster control :-)
How about we swing by, grab Voyager, restore its science tools using period-appropriate technology, fix whatever else needs attention and allow it to resume its path into the cosmos chirping back data (because...why not?).
But we also tag it as an historical site and let school children and their families visit periodically via FTL bus service.
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I had a friend who, with his father, built a 100% accurate, period perfect Model T Ford - even using period correct tools where possible during the build. His father was into his early days of cancer and lived long enough to complete the build and drive the car regularly for the last two years of his life. Unfortunately, my friend also developed a fast-moving brain cancer and died a few years after his father.
Their family donated the Model T to a local museum, stipulating that it be used at least twice yearly to let school children go for a ride in history. They also stipulated that the family have occasional access to car for public display and occasional drives.
Old things have value beyond their original intent, yet can serve that intent - and much more - long into the future. Waste not, want not.
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