All that interstellar travel, however, is taking its toll on the probe.
The wear-and-tear of space travel has caused Voyager 1s thrusters to become clogged.
Plot twist, that one is clogged, too.
An artist’s concept of the Voyager spacecraft.NASA/JPL-Caltech
Voyager 1 uses its thrusters to point itself towards Earth and keep communication lines open with ground control.
The spacecraft has three sets of thrusters, two for attitude propulsion and one for trajectory correction maneuvers.
Controllers turned off some unnecessary onboard systems, including some heaters.
That strategy successfully reduced the spacecrafts power usage, but it also caused Voyager 1 to become colder.
All that effort paid off, and Voyager 1s needed thruster branch was up and running.
Its clear, however, that the aging interstellar probe requires a lot more to keep up and running.
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