Voyager-1, 20-year-old out-of-service thrusters restored

NASA engineers have successfully restored a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager-1 probe that had been considered unusable for more than twenty years : this unexpected success , achieved shortly before a scheduled stop in communications with Earth , will allow the historic probe to maintain its correct orientation in interstellar space even if the anti-roll thrusters used up to now were to fail in the coming months. The Voyager probes, launched in 1977 , are the spacecraft furthest from Earth and are hurtling through interstellar space at 56,000 kilometers per hour and maintain the correct orientation to communicate with Earth thanks to several sets of thrusters. Voyager-1's main anti-roll thrusters stopped working in 2004 after a loss of power in two small internal heaters. At the time, NASA engineers considered these thrusters unrecoverable and opted to activate the reserve set. Years later, a buildup of residue was observed in the fuel tubes, which raised fears that the backup thrusters could also stop working next fall. For this reason, NASA technicians decided to re-examine the fault that knocked out the main thrusters twenty years ago, suspecting that an unexpected disturbance in the heater power circuits could have moved a switch to the wrong position. By returning it to its original position, they were able to reactivate the primary thrusters. The operation was successful before the fateful date of May 4 , when a period of pause in communications with Earth began: DSS-43, the Canberra antenna that sends commands to the Voyager probes, was put on standby for technical updates that will require several months.