After 47 years it’s little wonder that the hydrazine-powered thrusters of the Voyager 1, used to orient the spacecraft in such a way that its 3.7 meter (12 foot) diameter antenna always points back towards Earth, are getting somewhat clogged up. As a result, the team has now switched back to the thrusters which they originally retired back in 2018. The Voyager spacecraft each have three sets (branches) of thrusters. Two sets were originally intended for attitude propulsion, and one for trajectory correction maneuvers, but since leaving the Solar System many years ago, Voyager 1’s navigational needs have become more basic, allowing all three sets to be used effectively interchangeably.
The first set was used until 2002, when clogging of the fuel tubes was detected with silicon dioxide from an aging rubber diaphragm in the fuel tank. The second set of attitude propulsion thrusters was subsequently used until 2018, until clogging caused the team to switch to the third and final set. It is this last set that is now more clogged then the second set, with the fuel tube opening reduced from about 0.25 mm to 0.035 mm. Unlike a few decades ago, the spacecraft is much colder due energy-conserving methods, complicating the switching of thruster sets. Switching on a cold thruster set could damage it, so it had to be warmed up first with its thruster heaters.
The conundrum was where to temporarily borrow power from, as turning off one of the science instruments might be enough to not have it come back online. Ultimately a main heater was turned off for an hour, allowing the thruster swap to take place and allowing Voyager 1 to breathe a bit more freely for now.
Compared to the recent scare involving Voyager 1 where we thought that its computer systems might have died, this matter probably feels more routine to the team in charge, but with a spacecraft that’s the furthest removed man-made spacecraft in outer space, nothing is ever truly routine.
Wow
NASA should have known that rubber diaphragms wouldn’t last 50 years in deep space!
B^)
The design life was to make it to the far flung planets. It exceeded that. Shouldn’t be any rubber onboard but around zero, everything gets stiffer and more prone to not working as designed.
Thanks, but just to clarify, the bottom line of my comment is a smile emoji.
In other words, my comment was a joke!
B^)
It’s notorious difficult to communicate that online, and the shorter form (e.g. comments and texts) the harder. Somewhere I have a journal article about it.
Also I’d suggest a tongue-out emoji :P is more recognisable and more understood to mark a joke.
It doesn’t help that some systems use non-standard codes for emojis – I’ve got a client who regularly ends emails with random characters and it was over a year before I found out they were meant to be emojis – I think it was Win10 Mail encoding them weirdly when they sent.
Honestly HAD could run an article on communicating jokes and sarcasm online.
I understood it has sarcasm immediately and thought the emoticon was just garbage tbh.
I would assume most people understand Voyager’s original mission parameters and that it has lasted much much longer than expected. The very first line of the article touches upon that fact. The comment can only be construed one two ways, as a joke or by someone completely uninformed. Given the forum, it’s safe to assume it’s the former and not the later.
Bless you. We need more off the cuff comments to make us smile a bit. Everyone is too serious. V-ger is the best thing we ever did.
Well, the originally planned mission ended Nov 11, 1980. So they are running almost 44 years longer than expected! :)
They should have anticipated this, NASA is notorious for it’s project delays. The program director for this project should be fired and barred from ever working on another government project. He’s clearly wasting the American people’s resources.
And I’ve always thought the US space program spoke in the name of whole humanity. “[..] for all mankind”..
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/we-came-peace-all-mankind/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_plaque
“The program director for this project should be fired and barred”
Sadly, the program scientist for Voyager (Ed Stone) just passed away a few months ago, so this comment (though in jest) hits a bit.
They didn’t plan on Voyager being useful after both got past the 4 gas planets.
No, that’s not true – the entire reason for many of the particle and magnetic field instruments on the spacecraft is that they wanted Voyager to still be useful past the gas planets.
They certainly didn’t expect them to be running this long, but the extended mission idea was totally there in the planning stages.
And meanwhile I can’t even remotely configure my switches’ VLAN settings without locking myself out.
LOL!!
Right? Amazing work by the folks at NASA and it’s subcontractors. My coworkers wonder why I program for the future… well here you go.
A period-correct joke would have been that you can’t program your VCR, even. ;)
its amazing how much maintenance you can simply phone in.
NASA: Hello IT.
Voyager: ehh yeah. uh. my thruster is stuck. can you help me?
NASA: Have you tried turning it off and on again? :: hangs up ::
Well, my light traveling clock (which was ignored by the tip line like so many projects) fits in perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgokhjlXu8Y
“Light traveling clock”
I would rather use a “travel alarm clock”, it would take up much less space in my luggage.
“…less space in my luggage”. Literally.
The Voyager project has been an astounding success considering it was, by NASA standards, a spur-of-the-moment improvised ad-hoc mission using repurposed, leftover parts from other prior missions with one of the spacecraft launched being a backup ground-test article – spurred on by the discovery of a unique astrogation opportunity. They don’t make them like they used to.
Huh, these days Boeing can’t get their thrusters working right from the get-go, and yet Voyager’s thrusters have been working for how long? It feels like there’s an engineering lesson here.
I often think that’s because people in the 1970s were more thoughtful and thorough.
I mean, when do you hear about philosophical considerations anymore?
Back in the 1960s-1990s you had professors and other intellectual being interviewed on TV.
Or: The old space probes carried metal plates with messages for extraterratial beings. Do new probes still carry such things?
Then there’s technology. 1970s was primitive by today’s technology, but still very advanced.
Microwave links, lasers, computers, camera tubes and so on. Quite advanced as such.
1970s tech was also very rugged, with exception of early CMOS and DRAM technology.
Well, to be fair, the gold records and plaques where just a PR play to keep the public’s interest up. There is a near enough zero chance they will ever be discovered by anyone. Unless we chase them down for a museum in the far future.
It was a bit more than cheap PR, I think.
The golden records and the plaques also were meant as a message to future generations here on earth.
It was a gesture, a symbol of us trying to become one as humanity eventually.
It was about good intentions. Whether or not it will be found eventually is maybe not as important as the message itself.
The words on the golden record speak for themselves.
“This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”
https://goldenrecord.org/
Considering all the warefare America has been associated with in the past decades, these “little” space missions were a shiny, positive counter example.
Maybe even more lasting than the moon landings.
Both Pioneer and Voyager missions weren’t about cold war and “who’s first”, but honest efforts about learning about the universe and seeking for friendship.
It are the good intentions that count foremost, I think.
“The old space probes carried metal plates with messages for extraterratial beings. Do new probes still carry such things?”
The only post-Voyager probe to be on an escape trajectory (above heliocentric escape velocity) is New Horizons. From Alan Stern, the Principle Investigator on NH:
“We don’t have such a message on-board, [although] we did discuss it” Stern explained.
“When the Pioneer plaques were created, they ended up creating some controversy: they offended some people’s sensibilities dating back to the 70s having to do with the drawings of unclothed human beings, even sanitized as they were. And when the Voyager put plaques on-board, they went through a huge exercise as a result to vet the content,” he continued.
“All that is preface to, of course, is in the 90s there were many attempts to get a Pluto mission and and every one of them came crashing down. When we won New Horizons, I was determined to make sure we actually got this one out of the viewgraph stage and actually to flight,” stated Stern.
“After we got into the project in 2002, it was suggested we add a plaque and I rejected that simply as a matter of focus. We had a small team on a tight budget and I knew it would be a big distraction. I didn’t want to see us being distracted from the project and find ourselves derailing the project or getting into flight and finding we had some problem and wishing we’d have been more focused during development.”
Not everyone agreed with Stern’s decision.
“One individual on my team, one scientist, felt strongly we should have a plaque and protested that to NASA Headquarters, but NASA Headquarters agreed with me that we were taking the best course of action. We put that issue issue to bed in early 2003,” said Stern.
..I’m speechless. And a bit irritated, confused. I don’t really know what to say now. 😯
Thank you very much for the background information, though! 😃👍
I’m just grateful that it happened once. Future generations will be able to watch the night sky and think “somewhere out there is a memento of humanity”. Or something along these lines.
Lucy (not on an escape trajectory, but expected to cycle between the orbits of Earth and Jupiter for a long time) carries a time capsule for future humans.
Thanks! Found the article!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(spacecraft)#Golden_plaque
https://lucy.swri.edu/LucyPlaque.html
The plaque doesn’t depict any human bodies the Americans could possibly be ashamed of. It’s more similar to the Apollo plaques, maybe. More text, less graphics. Still neat that the designers of Lucy continued the plaque tradition, I think. And the fact that the quotes are not money related, as well. On other hand, the thought of having one probe with the ‘Rules of Acquisition’ on-board would be sorta cool! ;)
Now that I think of it, might it have not possible to use an altered Voyager plate with a silhouette of humans instead?
The shape of human bodies, maybe all painted black, wouldn’t have been offensive tu US citizens, maybe?
It wouldn’t have had revealed any genitals, at least.
I hope that future missions may consider opting for such a compromise, at least.
Because I do feel similar to that one scientist.
The human form used to be a symbol of culture.
Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of the human form is well known here in Europe.
My health insurance card has it printed on, for example.
Da Vinci’s drawing (“nsfw” to some of you)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man
Here’s a site with a sample picture of our health insurance cards.
Newer models have the drawing arranged in a way the chip hides the ‐barely visible‐ genitals. Sigh.
https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/51699/Techniker-Krankenkasse-plant-Beitragsrueckerstattung
If memory serves, they (Boeing + NASA) chose to launch Starliner knowing damn well there was a helium leak on the pad… yet – using Challenger logic – they chose to commit to the launch – inevitably leading to the helium thruster debacle in orbit … utter dimwits …good thing Space X was around to save their bacon.
One of the things most notable with the Voyager program now: the time delay for communication.
Somebody on the ground station send an instruction to a Voyager probe, and 2 days later the same station gets a response.