Original Coverage: Voyager 1 alive for another day with Hail Mary thruster fix

NASA has revived a set of thrusters on the nearly 50-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft after declaring them inoperable over two decades ago. Voyager engineers long believed they were broken and unfixable. The backup roll thrusters in use are now at risk due to residue buildup in their fuel lines, which could cause failure as early as this fall. The only antenna on Earth with enough power to send commands to the Voyager probes – the 230 foot (70 meter) wide DSS-43 dish in Australia – is undergoing an upgrade shutdown until next February, with only a couple of brief operational windows in August and December. The Voyager missions have faced many challenges since leaving Earth more than 47 years ago, and both probes have had to switch off scientific instruments as power dwindles and systems fail.

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