Content tagged "Voyager".
3 items (3 articles, 0 stories)
In November 2023, Voyager 1 started sending back gibberish. The cause: one dead memory chip, 25 billion kilometers away, where nothing can be swapped and commands take two days round trip. NASA's team rewrote the code around the damage and even woke a thruster that had been dormant for 21 years.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 are shutting down instruments one by one as power dwindles by 4 watts every year. With only two science tools left, NASA is preparing a high-stakes maneuver called the 'Big Bang.'
How can a spacecraft speed up without burning a drop of fuel? Gravity assist — the trick that took Voyager to the edge of the solar system and is now sending NASA's Psyche spacecraft toward a metal asteroid — is one of the cleverest moves in the history of spaceflight. Here's how it actually works.