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GeekWire: NASA turns to Voyager’s dormant thrusters for first time in 37 years

Voyager 1 is traveling through interstellar space, 40 years after its launch on an unprecedented "grand tour" of the solar system.
An artist’s conception shows the Voyager spacecraft pointing its antenna back toward Earth. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration)

Imagine you had a car sitting in storage since 1980, and suddenly you needed to start it up. Now imagine that it revs up like a charm as soon as you turn the key.

That’s the scenario NASA is using as a comparison for this week’s startup of a thruster system that’s been sitting dormant on the Voyager 1 probe for 37 years.

One important difference: Voyager’s key had to be turned by remote control from a distance of 13.1 billion miles.

Read the full article on GeekWire.

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