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Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Voyager 1, NASA’s farthest and fastest spacecraft, is the only human-made object in interstellar space, the environment between the stars. The spacecraft, which has been flying for 40 years, relies on small devices called thrusters to orient itself so it can communicate with Earth. These thrusters fire in tiny pulses, or “puffs,” lasting mere milliseconds, to subtly rotate the spacecraft so that its antenna points at our planet. Now, the Voyager team is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980. Now its 13 billion miles from Earth.

— source jpl.nasa.gov 2017-12-04

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