NASA wakes up the engine

NASA activated the engine to propel 40 years of sleep to save the spacecraft flying out of the solar system at risk of losing contact and ceasing operations.

The Voyager 1 space probe (NASA) successfully launched the inactive propulsion kit for 40 years, according to New Atlas. The November 28 test was conducted by the mission control board at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, USA, in an effort to keep the unmanned explorer ship operating for another three years again when flying into interstellar space.

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still active after 40 years of flying into space.(Video: Next) .

Entering the universe 40 years ago, is the longest and fastest traveling artificial object taking off from Earth. At a distance of 22 billion kilometers, the signal from a nuclear-powered spacecraft takes 19 hours and 35 minutes to transmit to one of NASA's Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, California. . In 2013, Voyager 1 became the first probe to enter. NASA hopes the ship's radio batteries will continue to operate until 2025.

However, the prolongation of the life of the on-board nuclear energy will be useless if Voyager cannot continue to direct the main antenna to Earth. If the ship starts to float, the risk of permanent communication loss may occur and the spacecraft will automatically stop working. To prevent this from happening, the probe was equipped with a set of gyroscopes and 16 propulsion engines MR-103 hydrazine (8 main engines and 8 spare engines) manufactured by Aerojet Rocketdyne.

These propulsion engines play an important role in complex operations like when the Voyager passes Jupiter and Saturn. They not only ensured the perfect ship of slingshot to speed up fast enough to fly to the next target and eventually escape the solar system, but also needed to keep the Antenna on board aligns and turns in the right direction.

When the Voyager left three years after the start of the mission, most propulsion engines became redundant and NASA ordered the probe to close all and stop the engine to maintain power. Currently, the ship relies on only four main thrusters to control the altitude to continue toward the Earth, using very little gas in a few milliseconds. The problem is that fuel propels on a limited propulsion system and the engines themselves begin to degrade three years ago, giving birth to fewer and fewer forces.

Voyager 1. train illustration (Photo: NASA).

In order for Voyager 1 to exist, a group of propulsion experts in the JPL suggested that the mission control board restart four of the spare propulsion Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) that have been inactive since 1980. This requires asked to find data from the first years of the project, and programmed for TCM propulsion engines to explode in short bursts different from the design.

According to NASA, in a test last Wednesday, the probe exploded a TCM engine in 10 milliseconds in short sequences. The results show that these motors can play a height control role. NASA plans to activate the remaining four engines in January next year. They will be used to control altitude until there is not enough energy, then the probe will return to the original system.

NASA also plans to activate the same engine, expected to enter interstellar space in a few years.