Posted on 12/02/2017 4:37:18 PM PST by BenLurkin
Voyager 1 hadn't used its four "trajectory correction maneuver" (TCM) thrusters since November 1980, during the spacecraft's last planetary flyby — an epic encounter with Saturn. But mission team members fired them up again Tuesday (Nov. 28)...
The little engines passed the test with flying colors, NASA officials said.
"The Voyager team got more excited each time with each milestone in the thruster test," Todd Barber, a propulsion engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all."
As Barber's words suggest, the mission team didn’t do this out of idle curiosity. Voyager 1 — which in August 2012 became the first human-made object ever to enter interstellar space — has long been using its standard attitude-control thrusters to orient itself into the proper position to communicate with Earth. But the performance of these thrusters has been flagging for at least three years, so mission team members wanted to find an alternative option.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Amazing. Between Voyager and the Mars Rovers, we built some great stuff.
Pretty amazing.
Send more Chuck Berry.
L
Is this the spacecraft with a diagram of the solar system, showing which planet it came from, and also have drawings of a nude man and woman as inhabitants of this planet?
If aliens come across this thousands of years from now, what will they think?
They will wonder what we taste like and if we are fast food.
Apparently, we taste like a sweet meat and our obesity epidemic ensures we are not at all fast food.
That's the entire premise of the first Star Trek movie :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_Voyager_Golden_Record
the aliens will think we are extremely primitive to have only two boring sexes when advanced alien life forms like obama have 57
'Aliens will eat the fatties first': Gym sparks outrage with new advertising campaign
Ditto.
"Looks like meat is back on menu, boys!"
Beaming with pride! My Dad ran the program at GE that built the RTGs that power Voyager 1 & 2. I still remember watching the videos he had of them smashing the transportation casks loaded on rail cars into a solid concrete barrier to prove that they casks wouldn’t split open in the event the rocket crashed on lift off.
The spacecraft are still called Mariner Jupiter-Saturn in our family!
Thanks for posting.
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Those dual main thrusters are impressively engineered.
There were much better computer programmers when that thing was designed.
LOL
Good one.
She bears a lot of responsibility for Obama becoming a Senator.
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