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‘Dead’ thrusters revived to help Voyager 1 through a communications pause

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NASA engineers say they succeeded in reviving the defenses on board Voyageer 1The further spacecraft from our planet, in time before the planned communications.

One of the side effects of promotions to an antenna-based antenna sends orders to Voyageer 1 and his twins, Voyageer 2, the interruption of communications could have occurred when the investigation faced a critical case-calendar failure-leaving the space agency without a way to save the historical task. The new repair can help in the original roll payments of the car, outside 2004, in keeping the veteran spacecraft that can be able to contact the house again next year.

Voyageer 1, launched in September 1977, is used more than one group of defenses to work properly. Initial claims are carefully directed from the spacecraft so that it can maintain its antenna on Earth. This ensures that the probe can return the data that it collects from its unique perspective 15.5 billion miles (25 billion km) in the space between the stars, as well as receiving the orders sent by the Voyageer team.

Inside the initial group, there are additional cannons that control the satellite vehicle roll, which enables Voyageer 1 to stay in a guide star so that they can remain in space.

If Voyageer is not able to control a roll movement, the task may be threatened.

But with the Thrusters fire, small quantities of motivated remains accumulated over time. So far, engineers have been able to avoid obstruction by driving Voyageer 1 to move between its original defenders and backup to go, as well as a set of defenses that were used to change the spacecraft track during the planetary Flybys in the 1980s. However, the path path does nothing to contribute to the satellite vehicle roll.

The original defenses of Voyageer 1 have stopped working more than two decades ago after losing power in two internal heaters, which means that the spacecraft has been relying on the ram of the backup roll to remained pointed in the star of a guide since then.

“I think the team was fine in accepting that the initial defenses did not succeed, because they have a completely good backup,” said Karim Badar El Din, Fwiger’s mission manager at NASA’s jetplage laboratory in Pasadina, California. “Frankly, they may not think that Voyageers will continue for another 20 years.”

Now, Voyageer 1 engineers are concerned that the blockage of the remains can stop Be creativeIn addition to risk, to revive the long collapsed primary defenses.

Fix broken equipment in space

When the heaters on the ravine ravaged in 2004 failed, the engineers believed that it could not be repaired. But with the threat posed by a blockage waving on the horizon, the team returned to the drawing board to find out what happened.

Engineers looked at the possibility that the turmoil in the circuits that control the power supply to the heaters has turned against the switch to the wrong position – and that it turns it to the original position may restart the heaters, and therefore, the primary wrapping cannons.

But it was not a direct solution to the investigation that works very far. The spacecraft currently exceeds hellaravir, the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and molecules that extend beyond the orbit of the Bluto.

The mission team had to withstand a danger by converting Voyageer 1 into the first roll cannons and operating them before trying to repair and restart heaters. Heaters can only work if the defenses are also turned on.

If Voyageer 1 is away from the star of the guide, the spacecraft programming will lead to a roll scramble – but if heaters are not running at that moment, the automatic sequence may have sparked a small explosion.

Nail test

In addition to the risk, the team, which started its work earlier this year, was facing time restrictions. On May 4, the giant giant antenna on the Earth went to the promotions that will continue until February 2026. NASA’s deep space network has been able to communicate with all its spacecraft-but its Canberra antenna is the only one that has a sufficient signal power to send orders to Voyageer investigations.

“These antenna promotions are important for the lunar landing in the future, and it also increases communication capabilities in our scientific tasks in deep space, some of which depend on the discoveries in JPL, which performs the deep space network For NASA.

While the antenna will work shortly in August and December, the members of the mission team wanted to lead Voyageer 1 to test the long defenses before they could communicate with the spacecraft. In this way, if they need to run defenses in August, the team knows whether this is an applicable option.

On March 20, the team waited to see the results returning from Voyageer 1 after sending an order to the probe the day before to activate defenses and heaters. It takes more than 23 hours to travel from Voyageer 1 to Earth due to the huge distance between the two.

If the test fails, Voyageer 1 might be at risk. But the team saw the data flow in it, which indicates a high temperature of the fluctuation heaters, and knew it succeeded.

“It was a great moment. The team’s morale was very high on that day,” Todd Barber, JPL. “These defenses were considered dead. This was a legitimate conclusion. It is just that one of our engineers had this insight that this may have been the other possible reason and was fabricated. It was another miracle to provide Voyageer.”

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