Nemesis Maturity
Voyager 1 Fires Up Its Thrusters After 37 Years
Published 2nd December 2017
Voyager 1 hadn't used its four "trajectory correction maneuver" (TCM) thrusters since November 1980, during the spacecraft's last planetary flyby — an epic encounter with Saturn. But mission team members fired them up again on Nov. 28th to see whether the TCM thrusters were still ready for primetime. The little engines passed the test with flying colors, NASA officials said. The plan is now to press the TCM engines into service in the attitude-control role, beginning in January. But the four TCM thrusters will likely be retired again at some point in the future. Each one requires a heater to operate, which in turn uses power. When Voyager 1's power supply gets too low, the probe's handlers will switch back to the attitude-control thrusters, NASA officials said. (Voyager 1 is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG. RTGs convert to electricity the heat generated by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238.) Since 2014, engineers have noticed that the thrusters Voyager 1 has been using to orient the spacecraft, called "attitude control thrusters," have been degrading. Over time, the thrusters require more puffs to give off the same amount of energy. Voyagers' epic journey through the solar system. See images of planets and moons, including Jupiter, Io, Europa, Saturn, Titan, Uranus, Neptune and Triton.
https://www.space.com/38967-voyager-...-37-years.html
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/de...icle_id=108/I]
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/de...?article_id=48





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