Voyager 1 Team Accomplishes Tricky Thruster Swap

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Voyager 1 Team Accomplishes Tricky Thruster Swap

Quote

Engineers working on NASA’s Voyager 1 probe have successfully mitigated an issue with the spacecraft’s thrusters, which keep the distant explorer pointed at Earth so that it can receive commands, send engineering data, and provide the unique science data it is gathering.

After 47 years, a fuel tube inside the thrusters has become clogged with silicon dioxide, a byproduct that appears with age from a rubber diaphragm in the spacecraft’s fuel tank. The clogging reduces how efficiently the thrusters can generate force. After weeks of careful planning, the team switched the spacecraft to a different set of thrusters.

Read More: ➡️ NASA

Related story: